


The Friend Benefit Connection

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Honey Honey [25]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Asexual Character, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Crying, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Flashbacks, Friends With Benefits, Hand Jobs, Het and Slash, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Nipple Play, Oral Sex, Pansexual Character, Pegging, References to Depression, Threesome - F/M/M, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:25:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: He’d had a lot of near misses since the serum - had his throat cut once, taken three bullets and had to walk it off, spent a miserable few days in the infirmary following an attempted poisoning. But he’d never been shot with the blue light that plagued his nightmares before. People became confetti, skies became nebulae, men and worlds were torn apart, all in the wake of that blue light.And yet. He’d lived. A cosmic joke - he’d spent his whole childhood, his whole life, trying to live.And now he couldn’t die.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first of the Flashback Installments, which are the main plot pieces of the third arc. There will be some stuff taking place in the fic's 'present,' some in the fic's 'past,' and maybe some fun stuff too. For those of you who don’t want to read about it, this is the installment with the flashback to Steve’s friends with benefits arrangement with Clint and Natasha. **If you like the idea of past Nat/Clint/Steve, fab! Read on! If not, don't worry - there is flashback stuff in other chapters, but the actual sex is limited to 4 and 5, which can be skipped without losing the plot thread.**
> 
> Disclaimer: I wrote some of this about half a year before endgame and, therefore, "i can do this all day" and Peggy having a picture of Steve on her desk were just good luck on my part. Which I'm mentioning because I'm annoyed they technically did some of this first xD
> 
> Thanks very much to 'A' the braintwin whose input is invaluable while I'm struggling at my keyboard, and to Cat, another member of the Ace community (who wishes to remain anonymous), and another member of the Ace community (whose anonymity I'll maintain because I couldn't contact them to ask) for their valuable and much appreciated feedback on my Nat. Also to Raindemon for the help with the Russian!

“Hey,” Steve says, and James twists to look at him.

Steve’s perpendicular to the headboard, and James is facing it, using Steve as slightly-damp pillows. It’s Monday night, and they’re trying to get as much sex in before Steve’s on duty this weekend, because it’s his last turn of duty before Christmas, and James intends to spend the week Steve’s on duty getting a couple of things for Steve for Christmas. He’s got almost everybody _something._ Becca’s getting a boxed-set of the film trilogy she likes and a poster to boot, he’s bought a special type of vase for his mom, a frying pan that his dad’s been eyeing up for a while, a book Amy’s been looking for but deemed too frivolous, some baby stuff for Connor and Cady. A really fuckin’ _nice_ bottle of weird ink from this one company for Steve.

“Yeah?” he says.

Steve’s squinting at the ceiling. 

“You have a suit?” he says.

“I got some, you’ve seen ‘em,” James answers, but Steve shakes his head a little.

“No, I mean…well. I mean, I want to get you a suit.”

James looks at him a few moments longer and then settles back down again. 

“That’s okay,” he says. “You can give me it for Christmas.”

Steve huffs a laugh, but there’s a tightness around his mouth that suggests he’s got something else to say.

“Go on,” James says. “What’s it for? Are you goin’ on TV? I gotta stand there with my clipboard?”

Steve looks at him for a couple of moments, an odd expression on his face.

“Now see,” he says, “I know the answer might be no-”

“Uh oh,” James tells him. 

“I,” he says. “Have this thing comin’ up.”

James considers this for a little while, and then sits up, shuffles around on the bed.

“Is this where I say ‘let me give you a hand with it?’” he asks, and Steve laughs.

“No, it’s,” he says, “I have the Conglomerate’s Gala on the fifteenth,” he says. “The Helping Hands First thing, we do it every year.”

James feels his gaze slide sideways as he thinks about it.

“Ah, yeah,” he says. “I see the pictures. I used to have one as a phone background, you in a nice suit.”

Steve chuckles.

“Yeah, well,” he says, “it’s plus one.”

James feels the smile slip off his face.

“Uh,” he says. “What? No, I…”

Steve looks at him, then lowers a hand onto his knee.

“It’s okay,” he says, "you don’t have to come, I just thought I’d-”

“What would I even wear?” he says, shaking his head. “And nobody knows who I-”

Steve rolls onto his side, towards James.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “Don’t fret, I just thought I’d extend the invitation. You know? And if what to wear is your problem, Jarvis has your measurements.”

James still isn’t sure, the idea of all those eyes and cameras. What if somebody asks who he is?

“I definitely want to take a notebook,” he says. “If I decide to go.”

Steve nods.

“Of course,” he says. “Just think about it. I won’t be offended if you say no.”

James nods.

“Right,” he says. 

“And just so you know,” Steve says, “I’ll be buying you a suit anyway.”

James rolls his eyes, picks up a pillow and drops it on Steve’s face with a _floomph_ of fabric and feathers.

~

It takes him almost a week to decide, after he’s consulted Becca and Amy, of course.

***

When James walks into the living area of Steve's Tower apartment next Saturday morning, in his pajamas, Steve is sitting at the breakfast island with a coffee, an orange juice, a compote croissant and a newspaper, which he's reading with James’ pair of fake glasses perched on the end of his nose.

James comes up behind him and slides an arm over his shoulder, down across his chest, and kisses him on the cheek from behind.

“Morning,” James says.

Steve doesn't say a word, he just lifts his left arm, straightens it momentarily to make the sleeve ride up, and holds his watch up near James.

_12:13_

James laughs, and then Steve laughs too, turns his head for a proper kiss but pulls away at the last moment.

“Oh wait,” he says, and then takes a sip of his coffee.

 _Then_ he kisses James hello.

“Fresh coffee mouth is better than stale coffee mouth. Come on,” he says, folding the paper, “I'll get you something to eat, sit down.”

James doesn't. He follows Steve into the kitchen instead and, when Steve turns around, he pulls the glasses off Steve's face.

“You don't need glasses,” he says. 

“They make me look smarter,” Steve answers, but he’s smiling when he says it.

“You're pretty good to me, y'know,” James says, putting the glasses back on Steve's face.

“Well turnabout's fair play,” Steve answers as James walks back to the table. “Your suit arrived today, so I expect New York fashion week in my living room.”

“In one suit?” James says, and Steve tilts his head, and thank goodness it arrived today because the gala is in like three days’ time.

“Well, you've got two haven't you?” 

“I swear,” James answers, taking a seat, “if you're talking about my birthday suit-”

Steve snaps his fingers. 

“You got me,” he says. “Still though, I'm sure we can find other things for you to parade around in.”

“You mean besides 'the buff'?” James answers. “Maybe I should Victoria's Secret it, put on some giant wings and flaunt.”

“If I wanted Captain America...” Steve answers, and James barks a laugh.

He fixes James a croissant and a coffee, and then spreads the paper out sideways, at the end of the table, to be out of the way and so that they can both read.

“What's going on today?” James says.

“ 'Complete Grandpa Still Reading Paper News When Tablets Are Available,' ” Steve answers, and James nods.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “ It says apparently the live-in help has tried multiple times to change his ways but the guy's too stubborn.”

“Mmm,” Steve says. “Imagine that.”

“Must be a terrible burden,” James sighs.

Steve side-eyes him.

“Yep,” he says.

James snorts and goes back to his croissant.

“Any idea what you want to do today?” Steve asks, and James stretches where he sits.

“I was thinking of maybe just having a sit-around-and-do-anything day in case you get an assemble alarm?”

“A Sit Around And Do Anything day?” Steve says. “SAADA day?” 

“It just sounds like you said Saturday in a Brooklyn accent,” James says. 

“Ain't that what Sattadays is foah?” 

James rolls his eyes and Steve jabs James' shins with his toes until James looks like he's had enough. 

“I hate you,” James says.

Steve shakes his head.

“You just can't get the live-in help these days,” he says.

James smiles, rolls his eyes.

“Hey, so, you know the Gala?”

Steve glances at him.

“Yeah?” he says. 

James tries not to squirm too much in anticipation.

“I think,” he says, “as long as I can have that notebook, I’ll be fine going. I-I mean if you still want-”

“Of course!” Steve says, turning to face him. “Of course I do, darling, of course I want you there. We’re ten this year. You know?”

James blinks.

“Holy shit, is it really ten years?” 

Steve nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “I…mean it’s been eleven since I had my breakdown, but it’s ten since we started the Conglomerate. And I’d love to have you as my plus one.”

James takes a deep breath.

The Helping Hands Conglomerate Gala is held every year - it’s a fundraiser, a way to spread awareness, an opportunity to network, and a way to remind the general public that the first way to give help to those people who need help is to _offer_ it. It’s important, and Steve always attends (unless he’s injured, like that one year he recorded a video message instead - it was adorable, and it still on YouTube, and James downloaded it). Besides which, the idea of standing in front of cameras and meeting important people isn’t nearly daunting enough to stop him seeing Steve Rogers look like a one-man-fashion-show, especially when it’s for a good cause.

“Just don’t get handsy with your PA, okay?”

Steve nods.

“Absolutely. You know, we got a book comin’ out this time!” he beams.

James didn’t know that!

“That’s awesome!” he says. “What book?”

“Heads Up,” Steve says, and James frowns. 

And then,

“Oh!” he says. “That’s the book?”

“Yeah,” Steve grins. “It’s a little picture book for kids, like maybe five to seven years old, about safety. Including wearing helmets. Marcia wrote it! It’s like, y’know. Sam is walking down the road but he’s so busy looking at the birdies that he doesn’t see the stoplight. He walks out into traffic and knocks a cyclist into a fruit stand. Or Steve is cycling in a park and there’s a frisbee, et cetera. Really nice outcomes for potentially horrendous scenarios, so we can teach the kids early without traumatizing them.”

“Aw,” James says. “I like the stuff I used to have to watch in school!” He puts his hands on his hips. “ _‘So, your body’s changing-’_ ”

“Stop,” Steve says. “Stop that, you stop it right now.”

James chuckles.

“The one who wrote the book, that’s the lady who yelled at you outside the store,” James says. “Which is the lady who runs the Conglomerate with you guys, right?”

“Yeah, Marcia,” Steve says with a nod as he covers James’ hand with his own. “She was one of the founders.”

“I bet it’s cute,” James says, and Steve’s eyebrows go up.

“It is,” he nods. “You wanna see it?”

James looks at him, surprised.

“You’ve got one?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “They hit the shelves on the Wednesday, in time for Christmas. You wanna see it?”

“Yeah!” James says. “Yeah, I’d love to!”

Steve grins, and gets up again, and he walks off, presumably either to his bedroom or his office.

When he comes back, he’s holding a little square paperback, on the front of which is a picture of a little guy on a park bench in khaki slacks, a checked shirt, and a brown leather jacket, who looks a little bit like Tintin, and is colored a lot like the watercolors in Steve’s room

“Heads Up!” the title says, and then it says, _Written by Marcia Hernandez, Illustrated by Steven Rogers._

“This is adorable!” James coos. “You illustrated? Aww!”

He opens the little book and, just like Steve said, each page is a colorful everyday scene before and after a ‘disaster.’ 

There’s a little Sam stepping out into the road in front of a cyclist, with a concerned little bird in a nearby tree. _Sammy’s going to meet his friend at the park but he forgot to look left and right before crossing! Oh no! Heads up, Sammy!_

Now Sam, the cyclist and the fruit vendor are all in a heap with little stars around their heads, while the bird cringes. _Oh dear, Sammy. You should always wait for the ‘WALK’ sign and look left and right before crossing the street!_

The next page is a little Natasha who’s waving to a little Clint who’s going the other way while a worried cat looks on. _Natalie is saying goodbye to her friend in the street, but she forgot to watch where she’s going! Oh no! Heads up, Natalie!_

Now Natasha and probably Wanda, it looks like, have walked face-to-face into each other with some nice exclamation lines to show how hard they’ve sandwiched themselves together. The cat covers its mouth with a paw. _Oh dear, Natalie. You should always watch where you’re going when you’re walking around!_

Anthony drops his favorite truck down a steep incline by accident, which breaks into little pieces (the nearby jackrabbit is very sad about it). Jimmy (oh wow, who’s dressed in a blue peacoat) loses his ball in the river (and all the fish can’t help). 

James flicks through the little book about general safety, and comes to a page fairly close to the end. 

It's little Tintin Steve, who’s cycling around the park while a happy little dog in the corner looks curious, star-emblazoned frisbee heading straight for Steve. _Steve is cycling through the park, but he forgot to wear a helmet! Oh no! Heads up, Steve!_

And then little Steve is in a little heap on the floor, more stars around his head, little tears on his little face, little lump on his little head that he can’t cover with his little hands, the friendly dog running over to help. _Oh dear, Steve! You should alway wear a helmet when you’re riding around!_

James…gets surprisingly emotional at that point, actually, and he looks at Steve. Steve lifts his head a little.

“He’s crying,” he says, in response to Steve’s unspoken question.

Steve rolls one shoulder in a shrug.

“I was,” he answers, and then he looks away. “I dunno. I thought it was a little much but Marcia said it’ll remind parents that it happened. You know? That they’ll think of the Conglomerate when they read it. And maybe the kids’ll grow up knowing they can cry if they got problems, you know? It’s…I mean, it’s heavy-handed but-”

“It’s really sad, poor little you!” James says, surprised to find that his throat is a little tight.

“Eh, it’s fine, turn the page.”

James does, and the next spread is all the little characters getting help from little bystanders, everybody picking each other up or sorting each other out. Little Steve gets a little Marcia, little Nat and Wanda get little Clint and Carol, Tony gets a little pepper, Sam has a little Scott, Jimmy…a slender little blond boy helps Jimmy. 

On the next page, after they’ve been consoled and patched up, all the little characters have assembled (haha assembled) for a garden party in the park, with lanterns and everything. Sam’s brought the fruit vendor and a fruit salad, Natasha and Wanda have matching plasters on their opposite temples, Clint has brought Tony a little purple truck to replace his lost blue one. Little Steve and little Jimmy are sitting together on a bench with the blond boy, little Steve with a bandage around his head. One around the circumference, two like diagonals - it forms an ‘A.’

“You nerd,” James says. “This is cute. If emotionally traumatizing.”

Steve takes the book back when James has finished looking.

“We’ll see. If one kid takes something away from it though. You know?”

“It’s sweet,” James says, and he brushes hands with Steve as Steve goes to take it back. “I like it, it’s sweet.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, and he takes it back.

James tries to get the picture out of his head of helpless little Steve crying on the floor with an injury he can’t make better. It’s weird, and upsetting, and James wonders if that’s how he felt - small and hurt and alone. He wonders if that little crying face - screwed up crow’s-foot eyes and a jelly-bean shaped mouth, big, blue tears like a sad, scared little boy - was how it felt.

Steve comes back, happy as a clam, and sits back down at the table. James is trying very hard not to think about actual Steve sitting in a heap on the floor, or picture one of those little children you see in disaster movies, confused and distressed.

“It’s only a kid’s book, honey, I’m alright,” Steve says. “All that’s way, way behind me now.”

James nods, reaches out for Steve hand and pulls it in to press his lips to the backs of Steve’s fingers.

“Good,” he says.

~

James’ suit is cornflower blue, with the subtlest of purple shifts. It’s Thai silk, he thinks, Dupioni, and it must have cost _a fortune._ James only accepts it because Steve tells him to count it as an early Christmas present, but he’ll literally never eat or drink in it. He’s trying to think about whether he trusts himself enough to even go to the bathroom while wearing it. It’s the weirdest combination of colors and James would literally never have considered it for himself. But it’s _gorgeous._

He has to take it off immediately, as soon as he’s tried it on, because Steve very much enjoys seeing him in it, and is very meticulous - if impatient - about making his opinion known.

~

“Oh my God,” James breathes, “oh my God.”

Steve wets his lips and then runs his tongue over his teeth.

“Heh,” he says, and James just shakes his head.

“How the hell did you do that,” he says, and Steve rolls one shoulder in a shrug.

“I got my tricks,” he says, stares at the ceiling. 

“Fuck,” James mutters. “Yeah but Jeez.”

When Steve looks over, he sees James shuts his eyes and swallow hard and try to get his breath back.

“Remind me to send flowers to the guy that taught you that one, Jesus,” he says, and Steve runs his fingers down James’ forearm so that he can twine their fingers without having to look for his hand. 

He hums a moment later, not exactly certain that James would like that one. 

“What?” James says, and Steve scrapes his teeth over his lip.

“I’m not sure you wanna know,” he says, and there’s a pause, and then James laughs.

“It was the Black Widow, right?”

“Ehh,” Steve says, tilting himself on the mattress to press kisses to James’ shoulder.

“It was both of them,” James says. “It was both of them?”

“Most of my experiences with that arrangement were with both of them,” Steve tells him. “They started me slow and then we got to tryin’ new things. You know, things that were new to me.”

James pauses again for a little while, and then says, 

“That how comes you know all the stuff we do?”

“Kinda,” Steve says. “Lot of it’s common sense.”

James nods, Steve feels the mattress move with the shift.

“Do you miss it?” James says. “The…I mean…”

“Everybody’s different,” Steve says. “My experiences with you are not the same as the ones with them, for a number of reasons. To start with,” he turns his head and looks at James eye to eye this time, “it’s you I’m in love with.”

James nods.

“Are they gonna be at the Gala?” he says, and Steve sits up, shrugs.

“Maybe,” he says. “I’m not privy to their mission schedule if I’m not on it with ‘em. If they’re in town, they’ll be there.”

James folds himself up into a little ball and props his head up on his hand.

“You slept with them a lot,” he says.

Steve nods - boy did he.

“Yeah,” he says. “First when I moved to D.C., again after my breakdown. Not while I was dating, obviously - I’m monogamous, you may have noticed.”

James chuckles.

“So did,” he says, “they come to you like…what, did they ask you about a threesome or..?” 

Steve laughs, he can’t help it, covers his mouth a moment later.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says, “I’m sorry. The idea of that - no, I think I’d’ve passed out if they’d tried that on me. No, no, it was…”

And then he really thinks about it.

He considers the fact that he’s technically on duty, but it’s also a Saturday morning, and he’s still supposed to be taking things easy. He’s back on detail, of course, but nobody’s going to begrudge him an extra five seconds if he can’t find his pants, not least because the likelihood of something happening that’s urgent enough for him to need his pants immediately is pretty low. It’s only the second week of December - supervillains tend to target Christmas rather than the other celebrations that happen around this time - Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and the solstice are usually safe. 

“I mean,” he says. “It was just…that I…”

James shifts a little, moves about until he can roll onto his stomach, support himself on his elbows.

“People offered help,” Steve says.

Not SHIELD, for whatever reason. Maybe they just figured he was fine, that the serum would….regulate his brain chemistry or something. 

Not when he was younger. Too sick for friendships and stickball and class, too weak for the docks and the grocery store and the printers', to frail and too broken, Steve had always known – as had his mother and Bucky – that if he'd gotten 'help' back then, the help would have been for his mother. _We can take him off your hands, Mrs Rogers, put him somewhere he won't be a burden,_ in a white gown with a rusty bed and probably about six months to live. 

Back then 'help' had meant 'Bellvue for as permanently as he continued to breathe,' and, with the ‘care’ they offered, that would not have been long.

And, though Bucky had promised him it would never happen, though his mother had clutched him close and called shame on the doctors, Steve's mother had died, and then Steve had only Bucky to stand between him and the wrought iron gates. They never spoke about it aside from the times when Bucky would argue with doctors and reassure Steve later. And, like fights with guys who were bigger than him, nights when the streets were dark and his lungs were aching, days spent shoved in a foxhole, and missions spent running through blue-lit factories with half-burned corpses and the promise of a genocidal maniac at the end of it, he'd been _terrified_.

He remembered Bucky telling him that, once, when he'd been in the throes of one of his worst illnesses and calling out for his mother, he had apparently, at one point, begged Bucky not to send him to Bellvue. Steve had never remembered this, but Bucky wouldn't have lied to him about a thing like that.

Steve still had nightmares sometimes, even now, even though it had been years since his crash and reanimation.

That, too, was something it took him long enough to do. Refer to it as something serious. 

Being thawed out. Being defrosted. Being de-iced and chipped-out of the old block, and all the other things everybody'd always said to him. His therapist hadn't liked it. Had never liked it, actually – and had asked Steve why he referred to it that way.

It felt almost trite by the time he'd admitted that it was easier to call it that. Unpopsicled, warmed up, it was like a detachment. Frozen? Accurate enough. Defrosted? Why not. 

His therapist then had been very adept at simulating the emotions Steve refused. Steve would tell the story of how his mother had succumbed to tuberculosis, and his therapist would tilt his head and press his lips together and sympathise about how much it must have hurt, while Steve would sit upright with his shoulders back and his face expressionless. Steve would tell the story of facing Johann Schmidt, and his therapist would widen his eyes and sit with his mouth open and talk about how terrifying it must have been, while Steve would sit upright with his shoulders back and his face expressionless. Steve would say _'when they thawed me out'_ and _'when I was defrosted,'_ and his therapist would frown and sit forward and say, outraged, _where did you learn to talk about yourself like a piece of meat?_

Steve was never outraged. Steve would sit upright with his shoulders back and-

Still, there were some things he’d come to before Dr Singh. Some things he’d learned to put together and voice for himself. He learned to speak to his friends like friends instead of colleagues, learned to ask for the things that would help him.

One evening, during a team meeting in the tower, he'd worked up the courage to say,

‘Guys, I hate talking about defrosting. Thawin' out, all that shit – I fuckin' hate it, it makes me feel like you think it's a goddamn joke all the time. And I know you don't mean it but can we call it some'n' else?’

One night, in the middle of a ball game, he'd gathered the nerve to tell Natasha,

‘You're the best friend I've got in the whole world, Nat, so can you hold off on the damn blind date routine? I'm not ready for that kind of emotional commitment, nor could I handle a sexual encounter without one.’

Once, while they'd been sharing a beer and talking about the way all Steve's subordinates look up to him, he'd managed to say to Bruce,

‘I get that you're kidding when you ask if I got a crush on one or other of 'em, but it makes me uncomfortable. Can we…not?’

Friends were friends, friends _are_ friends, and he learned that asking them to accommodate one or two of his preferences wasn't the end of the world. He still always tried his best not to talk about child abuse in front of Clint, did his best not to sneak up on Luke, made efforts to loom less when talking to Jessica. 

Not necessary, not end-of-the-world if he failed to do so, but appreciated nonetheless. 

Because all of them, every single one he’d asked, had said some approximation of,

‘Yeah, of course, Steve,’ in soft, understanding voices.

It's a story he can take the time to tell to James, certainly.

“I needed more physical contact than I was getting,” Steve says, and James looks up at him. “I didn’t realize how important it was to have physical contact. How detrimental it was that I wasn’t getting any - I think I…It was Nat I came out to, accidentally. After New York. And it wound up that I just…I mean, you know. I guess I really needed a hug.”

James shuffles closer, puts one hand on Steve’s chest.

“Yeah,” he says. “You like your hugs, huh?”

Steve nods a little.

“I do,” he says. “I was talking to her about not setting me up with people. About, y’know. Just letting me recover without trying to convince me to get laid ‘cause I…I’m demi. Although I didn’t know that. I just knew I didn’t want casual sex with someone with whom I had no connection, and I wasn’t ready for the commitment a relationship would require. I wasn’t ready for a relationship. But nobody’d touched me in so long…I was going kinda nuts on the inside.”

“Of course she noticed,” James says, smiles a little. “She’s…she’s a good friend to you, huh?”

“She’s one of my best,” Steve says. “She ties with one or two others.” 

And then his mind slides backwards into the conversation they’d had, when she’s suggested maybe he'd enjoy a sexual encounter without a _romantic_ commitment, as long as it could provide the emotional aspect. 

“In fact,” Steve says, “what I said was that she was my best friend, and I wasn’t ready for a relationship, and I didn’t want sex without some form of connection. And, typical Nat, she looks at me, beer in hand, and says, ‘what kind of connection?’ ”


	2. Chapter 2

In the early summer of 2012, the Asgardian known as Loki, on whom centuries-old Earth mythology was based, was discovered to be much more than myth when he attacked the city of New York. The emergency, military, and intelligence services did their best to push back the incoming threat and, with their help, the alien and his army were defeated, with Earth’s victory finally assured by the actions of a small group of people. In the wake of a terrifying day that would not only go down in history as ‘ultimately a success,’ but would also prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life, the city of New York began to pick herself up - as she always had - and put herself back together. High above the battered streets, known by a moniker derived from the initiative that brought them together, the aptly-named ‘Avengers’ convened at the top of Stark Tower at 200 Park Avenue, in order to take Loki into custody.

All except one. 

Because, alone in a broom closet, concrete dust in his hair, blood on his uniform, and countless previously-unimaginable horrors settling thick and bloody in his mind, Captain Steven Grant Rogers of the U.S Army - known more widely as the American, missing-in-action supersoldier, ‘Captain America’ - was having his first panic attack.

***

_New York, March, 2012_

This was definitely Times Square. The easiest thing to do in his situation would be to start fighting. There weren’t too many of them, he’d fought more at once than this. But this was definitely Times Square. This _was_ as much Times Square as the Recovery Room was _not_ a Recovery Room, and he could take the men who spilled from the cars like ink. But he didn’t know to whom these men belonged. He knew who they looked like. He would have trusted that’s who they were, too - they wore black helmets and black goggles and black armor with white acronyms stamped across their backs and chests. The acronyms were unfamiliar, but the black on black was not.

But there were clearly civilians around them. There’d be collateral damage. Except that a man with an eyepatch - and skin that definitely would not be welcomed by most of the guys Steve fought - spoke to him as though they were friends. 

He said that it’d been a lifetime.

And then asked Steve if he was alright. 

Steve said the first thing he could think of, because it was the last thing he thought of, less than half an hour ago when he’d said it.

And they coaxed him into the back of one of the matte black cars, and Steve stared up at the bright, blinding panels of light and color that lined the buildings. They hurt his eyes - it was like getting the serum all over again. It was like colors he’d never seen, an intensity he’d never known. If this was a ruse, it was a good one. If it was true, why should he fight anyway?

It’d been seventy years. 

It’d been half an hour since he crashed the plane.

It’d been two days since Bucky died.

It’d been seventy years.

He had to find them. If this was true, he had to find them, to tell them he was alive, to see them, to know who they were, this couldn’t be.

~

The building was too big and too clean. Gone were the rich mahoganies and opulent creams and green bankers’ lamps and golden fixtures. There was no luxury in this place - it was sparse and white, like a hospital. Or a prison. 

People, still flustered by his departure, stopped and stared when Steve walked in with the Man with the Eyepatch and the other black-clad people.

The ceilings were high and even though Steve had seen that there were more floors above them, the ceilings looked like frosted skylights instead of lamps. There were bars, turnstiles, glass gates, men in suits whose jacket seams fell oddly enough to show - at least show Steve - that there were weapons concealed beneath.

The Man with the Eyepatch said that his name was Nicholas J. Fury. He said that the building belonged to SHIELD and that SHIELD was born from the SSR. Howard Stark, Peggy Carter - Nicholas J. Fury talked about names Steve knew but talked about them with the detachment of someone who’d never known them. It was the way Bucky used to talk-

Bucky was gone. 

Bucky would never talk about George Washington again. The Shadow. St Patrick. Anybody.

Fury said that language had changed. Steve should refer to him as Africa-American or a person of color. Fury said that even the words that used to be fine were considered derogatory now.

“My title is Director,” he said, “you may refer to me as 'Director' or 'Sir' until such time as we are well enough acquainted for you to refer to me by my abbreviated Christian name in a one-to-one situation. My ethnicity is African-American. You may refer to me as 'African-American,' or 'black,' but the latter term should be used to refer to others only after obtaining permission from each individual. Any other terms you may be accustomed to using, including those considered less derogatory, are no longer socially acceptable, I guarantee it.”

When Steve asked how to get out of the facility, Fury said he could walk. 

Of course. After having several cars full of armed officers sent into the middle of Times Square to chase him down, after they'd come back in through ‘scanners’ and glass gates and turnstiles past men in suits who are armed to the teeth, Steve could expect to just get up and leave.

Who the hell did this guy think Steve was? The assault team dressed like Hydra, the rooms were cold and bare like Hydra's.

Steve asked him who was in charge, Fury told him the Allies and the Axis were friends now and Steve wondered how much of each.

Steve asked, did they ever find…? Fury said no, but they built a statue.

Steve asked him who was left, Fury told him Peggy. 

Then he stopped speaking. 

Steve sat down.

 

Half an hour since he crashed the plane.

Two days since Bucky died.

Three years since Steve got the serum, four years since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, six since the start of the war in Europe.

A lifetime. 

~ 

He learned about the Manhattan Project, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and had to take a walk. A long walk. It was hours before he came back. He learned about chemotherapy, cellular telephones, the internet, and stared wide-eyed at the material. He heard about the advancement of medical technology and closed his eyes, heard about anti-vaxxers and had to take another walk.

He learned about the Stonewall Riots, MLK and DADT and he said “What?” when the lady told him. “Homosexuals can marry?”

Even he could hear that his tone was flat.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice hard. 

“And he missed it,” he said, without even thinking. And then he said ‘hahaha’ but he wasn’t smiling and it hurt his throat.

She said, “I’m sorry,” and her voice wasn’t so hard this time.

They let him take the work home to learn more, and they showed him how to play the puzzles they’d put on the tablet. Colors. Numbers. Patterns. Recognition.

He knew they were aptitude tests. He didn’t care. 

Homosexuals could marry.

Two weeks since Bucky died.

~

They showed him her picture first, so that he knew what he was walking into. 

It was difficult. Beneath the papery skin and the wiry white hair, he could see her eyes. He could see her. 

She knew him, when he walked in. She cried, he managed not to, he held her hand and she couldn’t squeeze it back as tightly as she once did but it was tight enough.

He had to tell her again before he left. She cried, he managed not to.

At his dining table, in the apartment they’d given him, he realized that there was nothing for it now - he’d still been hoping for a ruse. He’d been looking for a tell. This couldn’t be real, this had to be manufactured. But there was no mistaking her eyes, no mistaking her. And he couldn’t hold the first sob, or the second. The third was stifled and he held his breath against the fourth until it subsided, scrubbed saltwater from his cheeks. 

It wouldn’t help anything.

It’d been three weeks since he crashed the plane, since Bucky died.

There was no-one left, not really.

~

The gym was empty and quiet whenever Steve visited it, and the owner let him pay for the things he broke without too much fuss. The owner was a man whose father Steve had saved and signed a poster for back in the war, and he gave Steve a key. Steve was the only other person with a key. Nobody but Steve came in at three a.m. Except Fury, apparently, who didn’t need a key at all.

As for Steve, he didn’t need gloves - his fingers would be healed come the dawn.

He’d be on another plane by then.

~

It was an aircraft carrier, with all the emphasis on air. Dr Banner seemed nice enough, and Fury made the odd joke.

He liked Romanov immediately. She didn't look at him as though there was something odd about him, didn't look at him as though she pitied him.

He instantly disliked Stark, whose anti-authority leanings were getting on Steve's nerves. 

Nobody was telling him anything, everybody seemed to be hiding something, and instead of working with them Stark was doing whatever the hell he wanted. At least Howard worked with them instead of against, or just plain separately.

By the time Steve found all-too-familiar masks in the weapons lockers, he wanted a damned good explanation and he'd murder the first person who tried and failed to give him one.

~

There wasn't time to mess around. There wasn't time to stop and breathe – after Steve nearly slipped right off the damned helicarrier, wind whistling in his ears, hair whipping about his face, live for two weeks just to fall to his death anyway, Stark mended the engine and one of Fury's men – one that even the great Tony Stark seemed to care about – was grievously injured.

Stark acted like it was the end of the world, presumably because he'd only ever had himself to look out for, but Steve was done sitting around without any answers. It'd been less than a month since his whole world was pulled out from under him, and he wasn’t going to wait to be handed pieces of a jigsaw puzzle any longer.

Romanov was sharp and fast, Barton was bruised and disheartened, but Steve had been watching Romanov, had been listening to her and making a note of the way she handled people, not to mention the way she manipulated Loki. If she trusted Barton? 

Steve had no qualms.

He used the uniform - if it could be called that - to get them a plane, and rode in the back until they got to Manhattan, even if he almost threw up his entire stomach when the plane got hit and started to spin.

~

It was.

Like nothing he'd ever seen.

Courage, he reminded himself, wasn't about not-being afraid. 

It was about doing it anyway.

***

Wet heat branding his cheeks, his lungs seizing, and his limbs so unresponsive they may as well not have been there at all, it was Agent Romanov - the capable, unreadable SHIELD agent - who somehow tracked him down; the catsuited gymnast who looked like a pinup gal, who opened the door to the closet like his name had been written on the outside of it. She’d known where to find him - he didn’t know how. It wasn’t a pressing concern at that point.

He sat on the floor of a broom closet, covered in grime and dust and blood, seventy years beyond where he ought to have been, New York full of dead aliens, his past full of dead friends, two childhood stories at odds some hundred floors over his head, alongside a range monster, a man in a robot suit, and the greatest marksman in the world. Blue light and dark shadows, concrete buildings higher than he felt he could see, she knelt in front of him like a saint before a leper, and held his head in her hands.

“Listen to me,” she said, and he didn’t know how it was her voice he heard over the screaming and the gunfire and the singing whine of bombs and weapons, the buzz of vibration in his bones and the dead silence of vibranium in his hand. “Breathe.”

He didn’t have the breath to tell her he was trying, couldn’t form words in the empty spaces between his frayed nerves.

Mouth hanging open - _hullo there, Steven, are ya catchin’ flies again?_ \- spine curving forward to push his head down - _he’ll never walk right_ \- she pulled his head against her shoulder and wrapped her arms around his back, put her fingers in his hair. She was so like-

“I know it’s difficult,” she said, “listen to my voice and follow orders. Breathe with me - in and out. Ready? In.”

It took him a long time. She told him over and over, in and out, in and out, even before he could do it, before he could understand the words, until the breaths hurt but came, rasping, grating at his throat, he didn’t dare close his eyes. 

“You’re having a panic attack,” she told him. “It’s normal.”

No, not now, not any longer, _nothing_ was normal.

“The adrenaline is wearing off, so your body is panicking now that you're safe.”

Asthma, pneumonia, this, it felt like dying, felt like being twisted up and torn apart for daring to come awake so far beyond the place he belonged. 

“Breathe,” she told him, and Steve wished he couldn’t.

***

“Don’t ask Cappé that, he won’t understand it.” Stark took the SmartPhone out of Steve’s hand instead - small, compact, bright when it flared to life, and fragile. “Where are we going, six-eighty-eight on third avenue?”

Stark had a look at the screen, tilted his head this way and that, shoved the SmartPhone out to Steve.

“There, take it back,” he said, “Apple? Heathen.”

Steve took it, looked down at it. A map to six-eighty-eight on third. He put it away - who the hell needed a map for directions in a city built on a grid? - didn’t say anything. What were you supposed to say to that? If he objected, it would only start an argument, and he didn’t have the strength for that. 

The restaurant was a nice little place, quiet in the aftermath of an alien invasion, what a surprise, but there were still people on site to take their order.

“Crazy New Yorkers,” Stark muttered, and Steve looked at him.

According to his file, Stark had been born in New York. Manhattan though, which didn’t surprise Steve. He was mildly surprised the suit didn’t have a silver spoon tucked in there somewhere.

They moved out - set off - and Steve went on foot with Romanov. Barton went with one of the SHIELD guys, and Stark actually picked Banner up and flew off with him. Safe, sure. Thor ( _Thor!?_ ) made his own way by…

Hammer.

“Jesus,” Steve muttered, swiped his hands over his eyes. 

Romanov’s hand was small and firm on his forearm and, a moment later, she linked her arm with his. Didn’t say anything, didn’t indicate that he needed it, just put her arm in his and kept walking. Walking being a generalization - he was hunched over and shuffling, and she was limping.

“Frappé,” Romanov said quietly. “Crushed ice blended coffee, from the French, ‘to hit.’ ”

Steve nodded, scraped his free hand through his dusty hair. 

“Copy.”

And the shawarma place was nice enough. 

But Steve didn’t eat. He _couldn’t_ eat - his stomach was still healing. He’d had a lot of near misses since the serum - had his throat cut once, taken three bullets and had to walk it off, spent a miserable few days in the infirmary following an attempted poisoning. But he’d never been shot with the blue light that plagued his nightmares before. People became confetti, skies became nebulae, men and worlds were torn apart, all in the wake of that blue light.

And yet. He’d lived. A cosmic joke - he’d spent his whole childhood, his whole life, trying to live. 

And now he couldn’t die.

But it _hurt_. He tasted blood at the back of his throat, smelled acid when he’d first regained his feet. A wound that would heal - _another_ wound that would heal.

Barton returned at one point, sat close to Romanov and Steve didn’t look too hard at them. You couldn’t offer much privacy with a whole lot of you gathered around a table, but if Steve could learn to ignore a soldier using a hand-dug latrine within the confines of a camp, he could ignore Barton and Romanov sharing a meal. Ignore their closeness. Ignore the space by his side.

He looked at the tabletop.

Less than two months ago, he’d sat around a table with others, with his boys, in a smoke-filled pub in London. Piano playing, tipsy singing, old glass and old wood and lamplight that was warm and comforting. Now he sat in a plastic chair at a metal table with a plastic basket of too-sweet food and a stomach still deciding whether it wanted dissolve itself a little longer or heal, and the echoes of the voices he was waiting for were being drowned out by the silence of a set of people he didn’t know and didn’t much care to know. 

You couldn’t smoke in here.

He could learn to fight alongside them of course. But he’d never be as close to them as he had been to his men. To _his men_.

“I need a little air,” he rasped at one point, trying not to hear a certain tune in his head over and over, trying not to look for a bartender who treated him like a regular, and a table he could spot from a mile away.

The street outside was eerie.

Dust-covered, rubble-strewn, the place was silent. Buildings stood damaged and empty, there were no cars. Half the lamps were out and storefronts were either caved in or shuttered over. He’d never seen Manhattan look like a ghost town before, and it was difficult to look at, more difficult with every passing second. He knew a cracked electronic billboard still flickered in Times Square, guttering like a candle. He was glad they weren’t there to see it now night had fallen, or the specters that hid in the shadows between each lightning-flash of damaged electronics. His footfalls echoed off the cracked concrete and torn tarmac, and he shuffled to a stop in the middle of the road and stared upward. Ash still fluttered down, like sparse snow. 

“Not hungry?” Romanov’s voice asked him, and he stopped looking up.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall forwards.

“I can’t eat,” he said. “I was hit in the stomach, I won’t be able to eat for a day or two.”

She came to stand beside him, quiet and careful and, when he opened his eyes to look at his dirty feet and footprints in the dust, he could see out of the corner of his eye that she was still staring up at the buildings.

“I guess you’ve seen this kind of thing before,” she said, and yes, he had.

He wasn’t sure what was worse - being somewhere so new or having it feel like somewhere so familiar. Air raids did that to a man. Did this to a city. He could almost hear the Carter Sirens winding up, but shook his head to try and preempt it.

“Have you been assigned to me?” he said. “You’re my babysitter?” 

“It’s not an assignment,” Romanov answered. “I’m not a babysitter.”

“What, then,” he said, “you’re the friend they’ve picked out for me to have?” 

She was silent then, and that spoke loudest. 

~

When Stark had finished eating, he left. He took Banner with him, and Thor went away by himself, presumably to go and-

Steve had no idea. He had no idea. How could he possibly know?

His hands were shaking and he could remember this morning. He could remember _this morning_ , before Agent Coulson was critically injured and before Hulk tore a-

A plane. A plane. Not only were those _things_ planes but Hulk had destroyed one. 

This morning the sky had been clear and he’d been holding a piece of glass that held the whole world inside, skimming over waves to a dreadnought that sat in the sea but lived in the clouds. This morning, he’d stood on dry land and then on the sea and then on the air, this morning he’d dangled miles above the earth from twisted metal and hung on without letting go, and picked up a gun like he’d never put one down.

_Had he ever put one down?_

He hadn’t dived for cover when the QuinJet came down in Manhattan this afternoon, he hadn’t run in terror when an omnibus exploded underneath him on East 42nd, hadn’t screamed a retreat when one of those weird reptile creatures had tried to level him with a grenade and take a bunch of hostages with him.

He stood in the middle of Manhattan and he stared at the world around him. This couldn’t be. The buildings were so tall and the roads were so straight and nobody wore hats any more. Nobody dressed nice to go out. 

His apartment looked like the bar at the pub, and felt like a cell, like a temporary hold, like a place to put him until they decided where to keep him, his tenement was gone, it was _gone_ , and he knew for certain because he walked there by mistake not two days before, heading for home automatically. The nice gal at the coffee house chatted with him about art and Iron Man and she wore yellow, like the dress Becca used to have, like the color of his mother’s hair and the papers in the book she gave him that were white as snow once upon a time.

He didn’t have the book now, a museum had the book. A museum had everything that was left and nothing that wasn’t, and his apartment had pictures and wallpaper and looked like the bar at the pub and he realized, mortified, that he might cry - again, a second time, another time in the same day, because it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair - 

Or maybe it was. Maybe this was what he got for living, for making himself strong when he should have died before he reached thirty, for sitting in a war room when he should have fallen from a train, for crashing a plane when he could have looked for his coordinates. 

He thought war was hell, but maybe _this_ was.

He wanted, he just, please, he just wanted to go home. He just wanted to go home-

“Where you headed, Cap?” Barton’s voice, rough, thick-

He looked at Barton. He didn’t know.

“What’s next?” he asked instead. 

Barton looked at Romanov, and she rolled a shoulder, shook her head. 

“Nowhere else to go,” she said. “It’s over.”

It was never over.

“Are you going home?” Steve said, and she looked at him, twist to her mouth.

“I keep an apartment. Why? Are you interested?”

He could feel his mouth hanging open, words small and bitter on the back of his tongue, hands stiff.

“I’m headin’ back to the carrier,” Barton said, closer, hand out but not touching, eyes open but head down. “Debrief. You want me to take you home?”

Steve tried to blink but it it happened too many times, his eyelashes fluttering - the world felt too big and too bright even though it was dark and crumbling.

There wasn’t an answer. There was no answer, how, after today, he’d been standing in his apartment this morning and the sky had been clear-

“How about coffee?” Barton said. “You wanna come for coffee? Back on the carrier?”

Steve nodded.

“Yes,” he said, yes, anywhere, anywhere that wasn’t alone.

~

Preliminary debrief was easy. He was used to that.

Afterwards, Romanov took him to the canteen for coffee. He couldn’t drink it but he took a cup anyway.

“You can spend the night in quarters,” she said, “if you want.”

Steve nodded.

“Copy,” he said. 

He didn’t need bedclothes. He wasn’t going to sleep. He sat in the corner on the floor and tried to remember anything that wasn’t today.

***

Steve had had to leave the room while Stark - available via videolink only - had talked on and on. He was just like his father in a lot of ways - his enthusiasm, his genius, his penchant for using several long words instead of a reasonable number of short ones, his overfamiliarity with figures of authority, his endless, endless, _endless_ talking, Steve shook his head, tried not to curl his fingers through the arms of the chair and, ultimately, excused himself.

Romanov followed. 

“What, I can’t have five minutes?” he said, breathless with the effort of not-shouting, with the effort of trying to hold his frayed nerves together for long enough to get through one videoconference. 

_Shut up!_ he’d wanted to scream at Stark. _Stop talking for one second!_

“There’s surveillance in this corridor,” she told him, and she took his arm. 

There was surveillance everywhere, it seemed, except where she knew there wasn’t. Even then he had to trust that she was telling the truth. 

***

He spent the fourth of July on the road. He went to the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful.

He hated it.

***

He spent Thanksgiving on duty, which he requested.

***

At Christmas, he stood at the back of his church at a quarter past midnight and sang no hymns, said no prayers. The prayers were all in English, and he couldn’t force them past the tightness in his chest.

He took communion and wondered if he ought. He knelt and prayed but knew that what he wanted was beyond any prayer. God didn’t send men back in time just because they asked - and certainly not men who asked it after doing what he’d done, certainly not men stranded here through their own selfish sin.

Steve tried to leave before the priest could catch him. Before he could be thanked for his service. Instead, his priest told him he was always welcome here. 

“Come here to speak to God, or to me if you need it. You’re loved, Captain, I hope you remember that. No matter how distant that love might seem.”

Steve couldn’t thank him, couldn’t speak. Only nodded, and left. 

“Merry Christmas, Captain,” and Steve did not turn back.

~

Barton and Romanov were waiting for him, when he got back. They both held bottles.

“What do you need, did Fury send you?” Steve said.

“That any way to greet your guests?” Barton answered, and Steve let them in because there wasn’t any reason not to.

“I don’t want a fuss,” Steve told them. “I’m not ready for-” he’d set two places at the table, always set two places on special occasions. 

“We’re not making a fuss,” Romanov told him. “We’re ordering Chinese.”

He wanted to be by himself. Alone, feeling betrayed by the universe, he was sad. He was sad and lonely and hated himself and everything around him. He’d been holding it together for months - couldn’t he be allowed to lie face down in his pillows and be pathetic in peace? Couldn’t he be allowed to grieve on the day he missed everyone the most?

Natasha turned the lights down. 

He hadn't put up a wreath but he'd got a candle that he'd burned a little of every day, with numbers down the side to show him when to stop. He didn't have gifts. He didn't have decorations. 

The small, pre-lit tree Natasha had brought him a few weeks before was the only thing, and it sat warm and glowing in the corner. It was beautiful and he remembered making decorations out of salt dough and newspaper and shivering through his half of an orange and being happy as he'd ever been.

Everywhere he went, everywhere he looked, every way he turned - empty.

And it was then that he realized they weren’t there because they had nowhere to go but because _he_ had nowhere to go. He had no-one to share it with. He had nobody left, and he couldn’t speak.

They sat together on the couch and drank hot chocolate. Sat in silence while he tried to pull up the strength to whisper words. She put one hand on the back of his head, thumb moving gently back and forth, and he sniffed, pressed his lips together.

“- miss ‘em,” he murmured, and the two of them nodded, sat a little closer, stayed with him in the cold dark of an empty night so far from when it should have been.

~

Come New Years’ eve, he’d grown used to them taking up space.

“You hate it here,” Clint said, from his spot on the floor.

“I don’t hate it in New York,” Steve lied. “I just hate this apartment.”

Clint snorted but Nat’s wry smile was replaced by very obviously-faked earnestness.

“I bet you’d love Washington,” she said.

“State?” Steve deadpanned, but then he shook his head. “I don’t know. Everything’s so different already.”

Everywhere he walked was wrong, every corner reached the wrong street, every block was full of ghosts. Worse, his new understandings had started to carry those spirits, too - his cellphone rang and he’d expect Dugan’s face on the screen, his emails pinged and he’d wonder what Phillips wanted.

“Maybe you need the break,” she said. “Just…take a little time and go somewhere that doesn’t feel like it’s changed so much.”

Steve looked out of the window. Even though there was an hour to go, some people were setting off fireworks already.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

Nat nodded, took a sip of her beer.

“We should go out on the roof at midnight,” she said. “It’s tradition, right?”

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek.

Yeah. It had been once.

~

SHIELD, Fury said on January second, would be happy to take him. To help him - rehabilitate, re-acclimatise, teach, support him. If he wanted to read, they’d find him the books. If he wanted to learn, they’d acquire the resources. If he wanted, they’d provide, and nobody could give him what he would have given anything for, and so he asked for the next best thing, the only thing he could think of:

“I want to work,” he said.

Fury held out a hand.

“Welcome aboard,” he said.

Steve shook it.

***

_Washington, D.C., January 2013_

Steve knew, even though he was getting what he wanted, that he was still on edge. He could feel it in the way his bones felt like knives, ready to slice through his skin and muscle. 

The serum made him feel things that way, sometimes. Sounds that felt like thumbprints on the tops of his eyeballs, orders that made his spine concertina upward, fear that tore the inside of his lungs from the outside of his lungs like felt. 

“Where do you get those?” Stark had asked. “Those descriptions, the really weird ones - is it the whole artist thing? Like verbal impressionism, you should write it down, you’d be famous.”

Sometimes he felt like his blood vessels would burst from his body and reach up to strangle a man all by themselves even if he managed to stop his hands doing it, white nerves tearing lines in his skin to reach up and wrap around throats like vines. Felt like his bones would turn to dust inside him, sheathed by skin and muscle. He felt like he only controlled _some_ of his body _most_ of the time.

His new apartment was nice. Big. Empty. The same.

Blinds, chrome, hardwood, leather. 

“It’s a batchelor pad,” Natasha said of it. “’S kinda nice.”

Steve had nodded. 

Definitely a place to sleep.

~

“Director,” he said, as he walked into the Director’s office.

He declined a seat when Fury offered one and tried not to feel too conspicuous. He was getting a new uniform, they told him. Tactical, bulletproof - based on his original uniform, less about the flag and more about the job. With his name and his rank and a good range of movement instead of zero audibility and a habit of making his underwear ride up, better for Covert and Special Ops. 

For now, he had a compression shirt and track pants, which he’d been doing most of his training in, and he knew it wasn’t good enough. He’d been getting looks all morning. 

“I trust you’re integrating comfortably,” Fury said, as though there were some comfortable way to do it.

“Sir,” Steve answered - a non-answer. 

His men, _his_ men, were the best. But they were dead. He’d be working with new teams now, of course, and he didn’t doubt _they_ were up to par, only whether he was himself.

“We felt it important to provide training,” Fury told him. “We’ll be monitoring your progress with your instructors, and your SpecOps training will go a little more into some of the categories that might not have been…” he paused. “…applicable when you were last kept up to date.”

Steve tried not to narrow his eyes. 

“Sir,” he said again.

“I trust you know how to handle yourself,” Fury told him. “There are a couple things I've got my eye on already.”

“Well,” Steve said, standing to attention instead of at ease, because he’d always been good at spotting the end of a conversation with his superiors, “I'm done making long-term plans, so you know where to find me.”

***

“You fight like a girl,” Romanov told him, landing on her feet.

“That’s ‘cause I was trained by one,” he said - _he_ was sweating too, she noticed. “You got a problem with that?”

Romanov gave him a look.

“Yes,” she said. “As a woman so adept at hand-to-hand combat that they’ve asked me to get Captain America up to date, I have a problem with the fact that you were trained by a woman in the first place.”

“Right,” Steve said, a little sheepish. “Sorry.”

Righteous anger as a defense mechanism. Not unusual.

And, if she was being fair, there wasn't all that much to improve on. He wasn't out-of-date because he seemed to have adapted immediately, following her movements accurately and perceptively. To start with, he'd been a little caught out by her movements, by the litheness with which she moved, and the methods she employed - she didn't know if it was the old rules-of-combat or the don't-hit-a-lady mentality, but she'd got him twice with her legs before he seemed to clock that it wasn't just putting up his dukes.

But _then_ , well. Then he fought just as dirty as she did, actually. Or, more accurately, he seemed to pick things up from her as they went on. He went from the decidedly low punches (obviously taught by someone - and, really, learned by someone - shorter than he was now) and evasive movements of his existing training into her sort of follow-through, beginning to anticipate her movements as they sparred. 

"You're good at this," she'd said, and he hadn't answered. 

Either he'd considered it sarcasm or he was saving his breath - smart from someone with a reputation for rising to taunts.

Soon, he was matching her step for step, and she only decked him twice before she found that she had to make things more difficult just to stay out of his way. He'd evidently learned, in the few years he'd had the serum, to use the length of his legs and the reach of his arms but this, training without the shield, was still new to him.

She got four _real hits_ against his ribcage - two with her left foot, one with her right hand, and one with her right foot before he learned to protect his flank without it, but she discovered he'd learned when he grabbed her by said foot and decked _her_ instead. They'd been on equal footing from then on, until now.

"You're doin' pretty well," she told him as she came back in, and she feinted left but he foiled it. 

"Not so bad yourself," he answered, and she smiled.

He went to take her legs out from under her but she dodged, tried to use his movement to get above him, wrapped his head with her thighs - and he rolled. She rolled with him, of course, but he twisted as she did and, having no desire to be crushed under almost two-hundred and fifty pounds of mildly-pissed-off supersoldier, she shifted, made to use the movement for momentum instead and - -

Hit the mat, hard, knocking the breath out of her, face aching.

“Christ!” he shouted after her, running over from where he was - from where they'd both been before he threw her across the room. “Christ, I’m sorry, I didn’t even pull my pu-”

She liked many things about fighting hand to hand, but few of them were as satisfying as kicking a man in the balls and watching him drop.

Except.

He didn’t.

He went red in the face and groaned, but he swept her aside on the mat a moment later, just a calculated movement of his legs. 

When she slid to a stop and sat up, _then_ he was on the ground.

“Ow,” he said, strained (unsurprisingly), and all she could see was the top of his dark-blond head and the back of his very red neck, as he lay on his side on the mat with his hands between his legs.

“You need to learn not to let your guard down,” she said, regaining her feet to saunter over, crossing the mats to stand beside him. “If you keep letting people get the advantage, especially-”

And then the whole world spun around her and came up to meet her, and he was over top of her, red and sweating and furious, barely keeping his weight off her.

“You need to learn not to let your guard down,” he said, albeit still very strained, not quite a sneer but close enough, his voice low and rich and strong enough that it made her ribcage buzz.

She was acutely aware in that moment of how big and how strong he was, and reasonably confident he was hiding a lot more rage than he generally showed. They could talk about it later, of course, about how bringing anger with you into a fight only worked if you didn’t need to concentrate - like a bar brawl - and not if you were going head to head with similarly trained agents. 

She got the feeling, actually, that part of him really wanted to hurt…someone. Not her specifically, but that she might well do if she just happened to be in the way and he happened to not be paying attention.

He pushed up onto his feet and got up, walked away. Well, limped. Even Captain America wasn’t immune to being kicked in the balls.

She narrowed her eyes at his back and rolled onto her feet, catlike, silent, intending to test how far she could push him before he snapped.

He stopped mid-stride and turned his head just enough that his ear was facing her.

“Really, Romanov?” he said - had he _heard_ her? _How?_ “I wanna call a truce and you gear up for a fight?”

“What’s the matter soldier, you gettin’ tired?”

And he looked at her then - head whipping around just enough to see her over his shoulder, eyes wide, jaw set, lips pursed.

And then, maybe she’d been wrong about how much anger he ought to bring to a fight - like a flower blooming, like like a city lighting up in the dusk, he came to life, huge shoulders swinging around as he turned on the balls of his feet like a dancer. 

“Oho,” he said, head coming down, predatory, teeth white and bared and gritted. “I can do this all day.”

***

He didn’t know how much he’d missed being in the field until he was out in it. Or, maybe, he hadn’t realized how much energy he’d needed to run off until he was actually doing it.

He liked the newer types of training - contact training and gymnastic training, no-holds-barred training with the guys from the special ops divisions - and liked the kick of the new weapons, the thrill of the new missions. 

He couldn’t decide if it was a good thing to realize how easily he ignored the body count. Steve could pull punches, could take people down instead of out. But he didn’t, for the most part, because why would he? One punch, one kick, a hard enough shove, and it was another one to mark as permanently no-longer-a-problem.

He’d missed the adrenalin of a mission going well, the hard, angry satisfaction of succeeding at something difficult. It was nice to know he wasn’t losing his edge.

One afternoon Steve had been waiting for the mats from one or two of the SpecOps guys who were finishing up, and they gave him an odd look as they passed, though one did give him The Nod, as Natasha called it. 

One of them hung around while Steve stepped into the middle of the mat, but Natasha wasn’t with him, and the couple of other guys by the mats passed him by. His hands twitched outward as they went, an aborted attempt to call them back,

He watched them go, actually, rolled his eyes as they left him by himself. That was fine. He could practice his combat movements, work on his leaps. 

He started to stretch out and warm up, working out the knots that formed in his muscles when he wasn’t moving around enough, but he was aware that he was being watched and turned to look. One of the SpecOps guys was watching him. Some of the others were filing back in.

Steve straightened up and looked at him.

It was the same one who’d given him The Nod, and so he stood and waited.

“You want a partner?” he said, and Steve lifted his chin in part-answer, part-dare.

“Think you can take me?” he said, not a partner but a challenge, but he smiled as he said it, half-joking at least.

So did the SpecOps guy. 

“Probably not,” he said, “but at least then I can say I tried, right?”

Steve laughed, sized the guy up.

“Sure,” he said. “Rules?”

The guy bared his teeth in a grin.

“No rules except tapping out.”

Steve nodded. He could handle that.

~

First, they spread out against the wall to watch. Then, when Steve took the first guy out, and then the second, they started to come at him two at a time. 

He stopped them at five to one, but he could have taken more of them, the taste of blood fresh on his teeth, the scent in his nostrils, the stains on the strapping over his knuckles.

It felt good to spar with people, better to kick their asses. He tried not to think about it too much.

~

They were never going to fill the hole in his heart, but they worked quickly, precisely and silently on-mission. They followed orders well and moved like shadows, a perfect balance of skill and determination. 

It was good to have a team at his back again, even if they’d never be his.

***

Later, they’d tell him they noticed. It was one of the many things he’d come to learn in the coming years that he wished he could preempt in the new world he found himself in.

“How did you know that I needed this so badly?” 

And the answer was easy - they could see it. 

Not everyone, of course, thank God. It wasn’t like he wandered around shining it like a goddamned beacon, but perceptive people. People like Natasha and, he ought to have known this, Clint.

But, he reasoned, why shouldn’t it be obvious? It had felt all-consuming to him.

Handshakes he maintained for too long, hugs hello that felt all at once too short and too much, he couldn’t think past it sometimes. He used to sit in a bar with his friends gathered around him, shoulder to shoulder so tightly there was no space between. He’d shared bedrolls on the cold forest floor in Europe, sat propped up against his men on watch, drunk form the same procured bottles and fallen asleep on top of and underneath his compatriots. He’d shivered on a tiny, creaking mattress in the cold Brooklyn winters, and pressed his face to warm skin, fisted cold hands in slightly less cold fabric.

People now didn’t do that, he saw. Some of them would, sometimes - slaps on shoulders, pats on the back - and it baffled him. Some of these people spent more time around each other than their families, some of them held each other together, sometimes literally, until help could arrive. Some of the people Steve worked with had stitched each other up and saved each others’ lives, but they didn’t touch, not really. It seemed they went out of their way not to - a profound irony, Steve felt. 

In his life before, when love between two men hadn’t been allowed, nobody batted an eyelid if you shared a tenement. Nobody gave a damn if you had to share a bedroll. Nobody cared if you hung off each other, drunk off finding just a sliver of happiness. It seemed to be furthest from their minds. But now, now that men could marry, people seemed to go out of their way to avoid it, as though any semblance of affection, platonic or otherwise, somehow constituted a grievous error. Blatant when forbidden, hidden when permitted - it made Steve’s mind boggle. 

And his skin ache. 

He didn’t touch himself often - only as often as his body required, which was more often than he wanted. But he thought of others when he did so - Peggy’s soft, cool fingers, Bucky’s big, hot hands. He kept quiet for the most part, didn’t say their names because he felt like a goddamn heel for doing anything otherwise. He could be standing under the full spray of his apartment’s needlessly complicated shower, and he’d still feel dirty if their names passed his lips - not least because he scarce knew which to choose at any given moment.

Still, he’d spend far too long. He’d admit it to precisely no-one but, just for a while, to close his eyes and run his hands over a body that didn’t belong to him felt good enough that he could imagine the hands on him didn’t belong to him either. When he lay in bed, he’d haul the pillows close and bury his face in them for lack of a body to hold, stroke his own fingers across his cheek, card his own fingers through his hair and close his eyes. 

But it was getting worse, and he knew it.

Some days it was nothing. People shook hands and slapped shoulders and sat close, and who cared? But then, on other days, there’d be fingers that were gentle in his palm, people sitting so close that it wouldn’t take much to reach out and embrace them, gatherings that wouldn’t be so strange if everyone had less room to move and less light to see by.

He’d see strangers at the subway stations saying hello and kissing cheeks - and he’d wonder at the scent of their skin and the softness of their clothes. Families embracing in restaurants and cafés, and he’d think how tight that embrace must be. He’d imagine it, sometimes, when he saw - what such a hold might feel like to him. A hand stroked lovingly down his spine, held close by care and affection while the world bustled on. 

Colleagues at work who passed him close and brushed against him as they did, people who reached under his arms at supermarkets, people who held his abdomen closed when he was shot - more, these days, of an inconvenience than an injury, but real hands, real fingers, really on his skin.

His bones seemed to cry out with it at night, ears ringing in the darkness. He felt cold even when he was overheating, the sheets too cool around him. The memories of them visited in the middle of the night, over him, or next to him, whispering in his ear real enough to make him shiver, and yet he woke alone.

He knew about the culture, he’d read the materials he’d been given. Men could marry men, women could marry women, people could go out to bars and proposition strangers but, here, he balked. 

He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

It wasn’t that sex was for marriage, no sir. He’d had plenty of sex and no marriage at all. It wasn’t that he’d never approached anyone - even though that was the case, plenty of people had approached him. But he’d turned them all down, even the ones who evidently weren’t used to that, because there was something, although he couldn’t explain what, that just didn’t feel right when he thought about it.

Just like he’d’ve sooner shared a bunk with Gabe or Dugan for warmth (and a bit of a change) if he’d thought they wouldn’t take it the wrong way (it wouldn’t be the first any of them had heard of it, they certainly did everything else together and he knew he’d heard Dugan seeing to himself at least once without any shame whatsoever), he’d sooner sleep with the members of his team than bed a stranger from a bar - at least he knew his team.They were good people, strong and fast and intelligent, and he knew them. He could trust them. As far as friends went, they were pretty good. And attractive, Jesus, his artist’s eye had not missed that fact. 

They’d certainly be better for him than faceless, nameless conduits of his necessity, anyhow. Even if they couldn’t stop the electricity that crawled across his skin every time someone’s hand came close and then moved away.

But it was fine. He’d done without for years, hadn’t he? Kept his own company, used his own hands, enjoyed what he could whenever he could - and at least there was that now. At least his blood pressure would let him get it up when he wanted it up. At least his lungs would let him finish when he started. And there were people, of course there were. Some of the SpecOps people, maybe, some of the people who ended up being acquaintances through the regularity of his routine. Joggers he passed on a morning run, waiters and waitresses who knew his order by now. But they couldn’t be trusted. And he didn’t understand why, after everything he’d seen and said and done, he couldn’t just grow up and learn that sex could be fine with people you didn’t know. It wasn’t beyond the realm of normality to want a _fucking hug_ God al _mighty_ , he wanted a hug. 

Not even skin, not even _skin,_ just warmth and proximity and somebody to hold and hold him back, he just wanted a fucking hug. 

He avoided the dame with the _'Free Hugs'_ sign on the sidewalk like the plague - if he hugged her, he’d be there all morning. He didn’t go in for the same greetings as the rest of the team or the SpecOps guys or the deli owner who knew him, because he didn’t want to break their ribcages. He sparred with Natasha and some of the other SHIELD people because, _Christ,_ he was only fucking human, and at least that way he’d only be in contact for seconds at a time, he couldn’t actually give people the heebie-jeebies by holding on too long.

His hands made claws and his muscles cramped, and his nerves crackled like exposed wires while his blood and his bones tried to crawl out of his skin and just _find something_ but he’d be fine. 

It was fine.

He’d be fine.


	3. Chapter 3

_New York, August, 2012_

He was having another panic attack.

The thing is, Steve said, the thing is, people underestimate how little feelings got talked about.

You know that whole show-don't-tell thing, he said, how you never say 'he was scared to say things' but you say 'his throat was tight and his hands were shaking because he knew that one thing in particular could change his life,' so that you're not just throwing information at people? He said, that’s not new.

He said, it's a nice way to put it, and it's good for books and things like that, but that's how he used to live his life. He wasn't just sick, he said, he wasn't just weak. You had to be strong, unflinching, unfeeling. 

Like the war. You fought as brothers, spent nights in each others' bedrolls when it was cold, shared the last of saved rations, huddled in foxholes and bathed in rivers. Latrines without walls, showers without stalls, lives on the line together but no heartfelt confessions. What the word 'buddy' really meant in times like those, there's even a book about it, Steve said – about the kind of shit a unit full of men could get up to when they knew there weren't no dames for miles. 

She’d smiled. What, like, _naked_ fun? 

Steve had shrugged.

“Well it's just fellas, ain't it?”

They were talking easy enough. That's what they did, of course, they talked – she was good at getting people to talk, which Steve needed. Someone to talk to. And Steve wasn't good at lying, not at all. He wasn't good at emotional self-defense and she did _immediately_ feel bad when Steve realized what he'd done.

They were talking easy enough, and she'd seen some of the signs. Steve was dreadful at talking to people who made him nervous – that whole _Yes Ma'am_ thing wasn't an act, it was as much a shield as his glorified drinks tray – but he was learning how to speak with her.

She'd been there for him a lot, he'd been on a lot of missions with her and she knew, she knew, that she wasn't the kind of person Steve Rogers would probably look at as a good person, but he was respectful and he laughed at her jokes and he really, really needed someone to talk to. She could see him wandering closer and closer to a precipice even before they'd been partnered up together. And people was what she was good at.

So they were talking about how sick Steve used to get and how long Brooklyn winters were and Steve had given her the layout of their little shoebox 'apartment' and listed maybe twelve winters' worth of being wrapped up in bundles and, most of the rest of the time, he talked about how good his friend was at everything, how his friend knew this song or ate this food or bought this book or cooked this meal. How his friend liked dancing and never spent more than five seconds in his seat at dance halls, how his friend was fashionable and suave in ways Steve couldn't ever be.

It wasn't hard to see it, she was never fooled. Her mistake was the leading questions – and, actually, they weren't a mistake. She just regretted them.

Where did they live, did they go out on the town together, was it always cold in winter?

Because Steve said shit like how much he looked up to Bucky Barnes, said shit like how much he wished Bucky Barnes could have seen the future he was always so interested in, and Natasha heard exactly what Steve was still too uptight to say.

I looked up to him, _and he was everything to me._ I wish he could have seen this, _because I miss him so much._

So she said something...not unkind, but unfair. And he'd stumbled.

“You loved him a lot, didn't you?” she said, and he looked like she'd slapped him in the face.

He said,

“What?” as though that was a terrible thought. “No!” 

And then he realized that it was obvious that he did. He realized there was no hiding how much he loved James Buchanan Barnes, and that he'd just blown his only chance of playing it down. If he'd said _he was my brother_ then he could pass it off as familial. If he'd said _oh sure, 'specially when he was yellin' at me for gettin' in another fight,_ it'd sound like any other close friendship. Instead, he said 'no.'

And that was such a ridiculously obvious lie that the only answer left was the obvious truth. 

And she saw him speak, saw it all cross his mind in seconds, and then saw the color drain from his face, mouth opening on a gasp that was too quiet to hear, eyes going wide as he started to lean backwards and she knew;

He'd never told anyone.

“Excuse me,” he breathed. 

He was having a panic attack.

She followed him after a few seconds, because he'd never run from anything, and considered calling Clint but that would have been worse, she knew. She'd have to tell him _why_ and it was bad enough that _she_ knew. She was certain Steve would never forgive her for telling someone else.

Steve was, when she found him, on the other side of the bathroom door sounding like he'd been shot when she asked if he was okay. She didn't know if he was throwing up but she could hear him saying 'oh God' and 'oh Christ' and 'I'm so fuckin' stupid' in a voice that sounded like he might be soon if he wasn't already.

“Steve,” she said, “I need you to breathe if you can, okay? I'm not going to tell anyone-”

“Neither was I!” Steve answered, and it was worse than throwing up – he sounded like he might cry. 

She knew what a panic attack sounded like and, though she'd only seen Steve have one or two, she knew his could be bad. He had them in a fashion that was typically his own, too, and that took her long enough to work out. Hiding his face, suffering by himself, it wasn't about being a martyr, being stoic. 

It was because _that's how it was_. That was the world he was raised in. That was the attitude he was born into and the life he'd led. She knew – because he'd told her - that he'd wept only twice for his mother, and she knew he'd wept only twice for his friend. And never where anyone could see him. Not at funerals or in hospitals, not in barracks or war rooms. For his friend, he'd lost control of himself when he fell, and then tried and failed to drink himself to death in a bar. It might have worked had it not been for the serum. For his mother, so he said, he'd locked himself away in his bedroom until he'd calmed enough to begin telling others of the news. And then after, after the service was over, after he'd come home, in the middle of a tiny shoebox apartment on couch cushions on the floor, with his best friend's shoulder to muffle the sound in the dead of night.

So she waited. She waited until he calmed a little, until his breaths were coming a little more normally and he didn't sound like he was ready to implode about it. 

“Steve, I want to help you with this but I need you to let me in.”

And his voice said - and this was how she knew he was a better man than she deserved – 

“It's open.”

He hadn't even locked the door between them.

When she went in, he looked ill, though he hadn't been sick. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, skin white, sweating, shaking, and he had his hand over his mouth, wouldn't look at her.

“Steve, you know it's allowed now,” she said. He choked out a bitter laugh. “And you know I don't think any less of you for-”

“For God's sake, Natasha, d'you think I give a fuck what you think?”

He'd said it quiet and fast into the palm of his hand, barely more than a whisper, but this time he looked at her, his eyes liquid. 

It took her aback – he didn't speak that way usually. He was more respectful, he was less vitriolic, but he sniffed loudly, and she knew people well enough to know that what he was showing her was anger - but it wasn't directed at her.

“It's got nothing to do with you,” he said, turning his head away as he closed his eyes. “Christ, it's got nothing to do with you.”

He wasn't breathing right, he was still shaking, but she didn't have many other options available to her. If she called for help even if she didn't explain why, people would wonder. He'd still see it as another betrayal.

So she knelt on the floor next to him and put one hand on his knee. 

“Doctors used to,” his breath hitches, “say to me, 'you ain't got nothin' I ain't seen before.' As though that made a blind bit of _goddamn_ difference when they was pushin' me around and poking me and whatever the hell else. It ain't about what they've seen, it's about what I've shown. Christ, oh _Christ_ I'm such a fool.”

“Steve,” she said softly, as kindly as she could.

It came more easily these days but she still worried it wasn't good enough.

“I don't give a fuck what you think about it, Nat, what _anybody_ thinks about it. But we never never told a _soul_ -”

He bit it back, shook his head.

“That was our last secret,” he said. “I got tags people know I wear, I got a story people get taught in schools but I...”

“It's not frowned on any more,” she said. “People have speculated anyway, written books-”

“Yeah, but nobody _knew_ ,” he said, and he was starting to _look_ like he'd been shot, too. “It was ours. And now _you_ know.”

“I won't tell anyone,” she said, and he nodded. 

Looked away.

“Thank you,” he said.

Like the way you say it at funerals when someone tells you they're sorry for your loss.

~

The pain of it passed, these things always do. Or, at least, he stopped showing the pain of it. It became something she knew about that they didn't talk about. He had been, she learned, interested in both. He was interested in neither for the time being. 

But she was learning to be a human friend instead of what the Red Room made her, learning to be what she could for others instead of being everything for herself. So she asked Steve about this man, about how they came to be the way the were.

“It wasn't like the films,” he said, because there were all sorts of films. 

Even one or two about him. 

There was one, he said, that he saw, with two men who were soldiers, who hid in each others' tents and made love in old barns and castle ruins. Another about two young men who lived in the same building and gave each other heated looks.

“That,” Steve said, “is bullshit.”

You couldn't afford that, especially not Steve. Steve, who was already seen as a burden on society, a waste of good time and resources, a drain on the terrible economy of the first part of the twentieth century. 

Bucky lived with him because it was cheaper, and because nobody else would. And of course Steve wanted him, of course they bathed in the same bath in the same room one after the other, of course they shared a bed in the winter. 

“But if I ever looked at him,” Steve said, “I never let him catch me. All that cinematic nonsense, the heated looks and the lingering gazes – I never. I had no inclination. Any other man would've killed me, I had no reason to think Bucky would've been different.”

“But he was your best friend,” Natasha answers. 

“You're not listening,” he said. “If I'd been wrong, weren't many would have hesitated about calling the authorities. How long d'you think I'd’ve lived in jail?”

But she kept an eye on him and taught herself to read him and, on a day when she thought she might have a chance, she said, 

“How did you find out?”

And he closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.

“I fucked up,” he said. “Drew him and some girl and I did a better job of him and I never gave him a goddamn clue. But it turns out that when you feel that way about somebody, you either do what I did and shut down how you feel about it, or you do what he did. You look for any little sign. Every little bit of hope. And he sat me down one night and asked me if I was in love with him and I did exactly what I fuckin' did with you.”

But he didn't say it with any heat this time. He was numb about it by now.

“I said, 'are you gonna call the doctors on me, Buck? Or the cops?' And he said, 'Christ, you're an idiot,' and kissed me and I...”

He got a faraway look in his eyes.

“I remember being shocked and terrified and then he hugged me. Put both his arms around me and squeezed and I had my chin on his shoulder and I just...we just...held each other. Shakin’.”

Before Nat could speak, he continued.

“But it wasn't like those films. We never did a thing outside the apartment. Sure as hell didn't do aything in Europe. We would'a been...kicked out at best. A disgrace. We'd've had nowhere to go, we'd've been disowned by them that knew us. I know one of our guys would have murdered us, that's for sure – he fuckin' _hated_ people like us.”

Nat frowns, realizes that if that's all true then...

“There weren't any barns or castles or...?” she said, trying to prompt him in a lighthearted way.

“Never outside the apartment. Last time I kissed him was in our living room before he shipped out. We'd been together eighteen months,” Steve said. “And I went and joined up instead of going home to him on his last night, and then...Well, Captain America can’t be caught at somethin’ like that, now, can he? Biggest regret of my life.”

“But you fought side by side in Europe for _two_ years,” she said.

Steve nods.

“Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

~

And it would tear him apart, she could see that now, if they let it. He'd spent years with the love of his life but only eighteen months as his lover, two years fighting beside him, and then another three grieving. He’d spent two years in Europe with a woman who’d kept his picture on her desk until the day she retired and then taken it home. History books had dates but nobody seemed to remember that, for Steve, when he'd been reanimated, James Buchanan Barnes had been dead for less than a week, and Peggy Carter had kissed him less than an hour before. All the jokes and blind dates, all the awkwardness and self-loathing...Natasha hadn't been able to set him up, hadn't been able to change his mind or cheer him. Steve wasn't some awkward inexperienced idiot - Steve had _lost his husband and his wife._ And it would _kill_ him.

So she talked to him, whenever she could. She showed up on his doorstep on special occasions, because he was never celebrating them. Easter, Christmas, his birthday, she had takeout (he loved Chinese and Mexican) and comfort things (like warm pastries and hot chocolate) and she'd find the blankets she'd bought him and the pillows he didn't use on the bed and make them a nest on the couch.

Clint became a part of it because Clint was a part of her life, and she was a part of Steve's. He'd either fit on the couch or perch on various pieces of furniture, and they spent their time around Steve. It wasn't difficult. 

Clint found out about Bucky Barnes not long after that because, after he'd promised the utmost secrecy and the greatest respect, Steve told him.

It had begun like a mission, but it felt more like a friendship with every day and, after a while, Steve seemed a little more stable at least.

***

And so it occurred to her long before he moved up to Washington in the January of 2013. Long before he put himself in Nick Fury’s hands - because it was easy. And she presented it logically.

She’d started greeting him with a hug, a press of her lips to his cheek. He’d grasp her upper arms and let her - and, of course, he’d let her go when she moved. But it always pulled against his grip just a little. It was always a movement that she initiated.

She spent downtime with him and it surprised her to begin with that she was doing it because she wanted to. It wasn’t a hardship, even though she’d once thought it might be. He was quiet and anxious and hurt, she could see it. If there was any man who looked like his heart was aching, it was him. And, when he wasn’t trying to hide his wounds, to hold himself together and bleed without attracting attention, and when he wasn’t distracted by the few things that still left the residue of enjoyment in his mind - art, people, the discoveries of a world too new to him - he was white fire and granite will.

She had no idea if he wanted training, but she’d put herself forward for it if he did. A man like that, this man, Steve, Steve was dangerous, like she was dangerous. Sharp, perceived for too long as weak. But he was piercingly proud with it, tooth-breakingly stoic.

It would tear him apart if she let it, and so she spoke to Clint instead.

She got nearer to Steve once they’d decided. 

They both did - but she was better at it.

She ran her fingers through his hair when he was tired. Rubbed the knots from his shoulders and his back (knots that were so tight the release left his body sagging and his lashes dampwith relief, she had no idea how he could function in hand-to-hand carrying knots like that). She sat too close and draped herself over him, and he took it all in stride, treated her like a member of the team. It was interesting to see - interesting to know that he must be aware of what she was doing but ignoring it anyway.

She asked him one night, did her like her dress? And he looked at her in it.

“It’s not your color,” he said, and his eyes didn’t linger at her breasts, he didn’t go pink over his nose. 

She could get him to do so, of course but, left to his own devices, she was a friend first.

Perhaps they could make this work after all.


	4. Chapter 4

_Washington, D.C, May 2013_

When she first suggested it, he was disappointed.

He made sure he let his face show it, too. He’d been pleased to see her, happy she’d decided to spend the evening with him - her and Clint both. As far as friends went, he had very few in this century and he’d been irrationally happy to count her among them. To have her and Clint in a team he could be part of. 

Stark and Banner were off by themselves, of course and, with Thor off-world, he didn’t have anyone else to speak to in general. SHIELD had him running small, dangerous errands on the side (to some degree) with the two of them as COs or SIC depending on the territory - two or three of which had already gone south fast - but he’d been so sure that she and Clint would treat him as close coworkers, if not friends.

“Don’t be unkind,” he said quietly. A woman like her, what the hell was she doing talking like that to a man like him. “Just because you know a couple things about me don’t mean you gotta-”

“I’m serious,” she said, and he narrowed his eyes.

“Then what do you mean, ‘what kind of connection?’ ” he bit back.

And he was asking the question but already knew the answer - she hadn’t asked to hear an answer, she’d asked as a seduction. He’d heard things like this before, of course he had. He’d been the butt of plenty of jokes, the patsy for plenty of snide and sneering self-righteous - -

“Steve,” she said, and she reached out to put her hand on his.

He felt kind of ill.

“Don’t,” he said, and it was terrible of him - he couldn’t bring himself to take his hand away. 

He knew what she was doing - that was what she did, wasn’t it? This was how she manipulated people? But her skin was soft and her voice was low and he wanted to believe it because she’d kiss him hello and her hands would linger in his hair and -

“What kind of connection would you want?” she said, and it hurt.

It felt like betrayal, almost.

“Don’t be unkind,” he said again.

She leaned forward, settled her hand on his thigh instead, thumb shifting just a little to stroke his inseam.

“I know you’re not ready for a relationship,” she said. “I’m not asking you for one. I’m saying, you’ve got a certain way of looking at things, and I think we can help.”

“We?” he said, looking over at Clint, ignoring her hand on his leg.

Clint was sitting very still, waiting very quietly, just watching.

“Come on,” Steve said, and he tried to keep his voice steady - it wasn’t fair, it was never fair. He knew better than to hope. “Don’t do this.”

And Natasha shook her head.

“If you want us to stop, then we will,” she said, “but sex isn’t the same for us as it is for you. To start with, I’m asexual.”

Steve’s brow furrowed just a little in the middle.

“I,” he said, “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’m not sexually attracted to anyone,” she answered. “I don’t feel sexual attraction. I have friends, people I care very much about. And sex can feel nice for me, but I’m not attracted to you. Or anyone.”

“If you’re not attra-”

“Because we’re friends, Cap,” Clint said. 

He got up from his chair, crossed the room, and came to sit on the other side of Steve from Nat.

“It’s called Friends With Benefits,” Natasha said. “Sleeping together for fun, out of friendship. Some don’t feel sexual attraction to anyone. That’s called Asexual.”

“Some people can potentially feel attraction to anybody,” Clint said, and Steve turned his head and looked at him. “That’s called Pansexual.”

“Some people can’t form sexual attraction without an emotional connection,” she said, and he looked at her again. “They have to be close. But they don’t have to be in love.”

Steve felt the words stick in his throat, searched her face.

“What’s that called?” he said.

“That’s called Demisexual,” Clint answered. “You like men and women. That’s Bisexual.”

“But how can…I…?”

“You can be both,” Natasha said. “You can be bisexual and demisexual. Do those things feel like they fit you?”

Steve opened his mouth, felt his face go warm and the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It took him a moment but he nodded a little. He felt every bit as young as he was in those few moments, every bit as inexperienced, and Clint lifted his head a little, searched Steve's face.

“What's wrong, Boss?” Clint said, his voice a murmur, and Steve couldn't hold his gaze, shook his head. 

“I,” he said, little more than a whisper, and Natasha moved, then.

She leaned towards Clint, past Steve, and kissed him.

“We're not in love with you,” she said to Steve when she and Clint broke apart. “That's not what it means.”

“You've sewn up bullet wounds for us,” Clint told him, ducking his head to try and get eye contact back. “Haven't you? Given us painkillers and carried us to the jet, can't we carry you, too?” 

“It's not a betrayal, to need,” Natasha told him. “To want. When was the last time somebody touched you like you wanted?”

“Last time somebody made you feel good?” Clint added, and Steve shook his head again. 

Clint moved his hand, tucked it under Steve's chin.

“You gotta eat, you gotta sleep,” he said. “Gotta speak to people, gotta go outside and feel the sun on your face. Don't you?” 

_“Yest' mnogo sposobov golodat',”_ she said, and Clint nodded.

“ 'There are many ways to starve.' ”

Steve just stared at both of them, Clint and then Nat, helpless. How to speak when you didn't know the words?

“Let us take you to bed,” Clint told him. “Somewhere comfortable you can lie down, where you're not worried we can get behind you. We don't even have to do anything, just let us be near you. All right?”

Natasha – telegraphing her movements clearly – reached into Steve’s collar and picked up the tags on their chain and moved them, sliding them along the chain with a rasp of metal on metal, until they were at the back of his neck. Then she let go, so that they fell down the back of his shirt.

“No,” he said, not panicking, not quite, “no, I-I don't want him out of the way-”

“It's to protect him,” she answered, and Steve felt his throat tighten, “to put you between us.”

_To keep him safe._

Steve’s eyes stung.

“Let us take you to bed,” Clint said again and, slowly, Steve nodded.

~

It was easy enough to lead him to the huge, bright bedroom, and it was a good place to be to try something like this. The whole room was warm and neutral because Clint had never changed it, and Steve couldn’t help stumbling after them as though he'd never seen a bedroom in his life. 

Which was how Steve found himself here, now, completely overwhelmed, skin shivery. 

He was still fully dressed, sitting on Clint’s bed - he didn’t presume they’d go to Natasha’s apartment, because she either wouldn’t use it or wouldn’t let anyone else use it - while Clint did a couple of things around the room. Turning little lamps on to warm the color temperature, folding some clothes that hadn’t been folded. It felt strange to sit on a bed that wasn’t his own and know that the reason they were here was sex. It wasn’t that he’d never had it, just that it had been so long. Mostly, it was that he’d never been in a room so light and so big, and was still half expecting that someone would walk in and arrest him. His feet were off the ground, too, Natasha sitting near the pillows, behind him, which meant that he’d have to actively get off the bed if he wanted to leave.

“You want the door closed?” Clint asked, and Steve nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, not having realized until Clint asked. “Please.”

Clint nodded, went to close the bedroom door and then came back again, walked into the en suite for a couple of things. Natasha didn’t say anything, and that was almost worse, somehow.

Clint came back from the en suite with a towel and set it down on a chair, and then he opened the chest of drawers and-

“So we gonna fuck?” Steve said, because best foot forward, no hesitation, and Clint turned to look at him, eyebrows raised, still halfway bent down to the chest of drawers.

“Not today,” he said, “no? That wasn’t the plan. I mean, we can if you want?”

Steve wished he hadn’t felt quite so relieved, actually, but he did, and it must have shown on his face, because Clint kind of smiled a little, soft and apologetic. Pitying. Then he looked at Natasha and, just as Steve was considering leaving, considering that maybe this wasn’t such a swell idea after all, Natasha’s hands settled on his body - one on his shoulder, one on his waist.

They weren’t doing anything, not really. Once Clint came to sit next to him, they were just sitting together on the bed like they had been on the couch, but it was the implication. Natasha's small, cool hands pressed against cotton where the skin itched underneath, skin that ached for contact. He arched into it when she stroked her fingers over his waist at one side, his chest on the other, turned his head toward Clint as Clint cradled his skull like a precious thing. They sat either side of him because they both understood what it was like to want an escape route, and Steve was the type to barrel straight ahead. 

As it was, his hands wouldn't work, nerves and anticipation freezing his limbs so that his fingers curled in claws, one hand on Natasha's thigh and the other on Clint's. His body was a livewire, singing just from this, and he knew what a wanton picture he must make already – had spent enough time alone with himself to know what he must look like – flushed and trembling. This body, obscene, looked a certain way if he sat just so, if he stood just so, and sitting splayed out on a bed with his shirt partway open had to look...

Steve tried not to think about it. 

Nat mapped him out, delicate touches over his clothes that riled him more than the sweet release of good pressure might, fingers whispering over skin that hadn't felt a touch like it for years. 

“Please,” he murmured nonsensically, perhaps an inch from Clint’s mouth – they were already doing what he was asking for – eyes shut tight as Clint slid his fingers through the short hairs on the back of Steve's neck, up to the back of his skull, dropping his other hand to slide it up the inside of Steve's thigh as he tilted his head, as he moved forward.

Clint's hands felt small, too, and it wasn't until then that he remembered the disconnect, that he remembered how big he was and how the hand that followed his inseam wasn't small at all. Nat's fingers brushed the tags that settled over his spine, and it hurt to feel them shift, hurt him to know they were there to be felt, as exposed as he was-

It felt suddenly like-

“Wait,” he said, “wait, I can't, I _can't_ ,” and Clint backed off from the kiss he hadn’t taken, but didn't let go, held his hand against Steve's head and said,

“Okay,” easy as pie.

Natasha, for once, didn't say anything, and Steve was struck by how unusual it was. He expected her to say something, anything, either to make light of or encourage, but Clint held his attention and Natasha's hands fell still.

“Ain't a thing you can't back out of, Cap,” he said, stroking Steve's cheekbone with his thumb. “Just breathe a minute, wait it out, see how you feel. You say the word and we stop, doesn't matter how far along we are.”

Steve looked at him, breaths tight, categorized Clint’s face and then Natasha’s, but he couldn’t close the distance between them. Shook his head.

“I…” he said, at a loss.

“Here,” she said softly, shifting behind him, more kindly than he’d ever heard her speak, “lie back.”

He did, hands on the bed to help him, legs unfolding for more control, but it felt strange, felt like settling himself in a trap. He felt ready to crawl out of his skin, ready to shed his shirt if it just meant getting away but, at the same time, he wanted to grab at Clint and pull him down.

“It’s okay,” Clint said, and Steve looked upwards to try and see Natasha. 

She leaned over him, both hands on his shoulders, and smiled a little.

“Nervous?” she said, and he frowned.

“That’s n-not exactly the word I’d choose,” he answered, but then, _then_ the dip in the mattress down by his feet changed, and he looked down the length of himself at Clint, at where Clint was starting to climb over top of him. 

There was something under Steve’s skin, something like panic, and he tried to swallow it down - it was _like_ panic but it _wasn’t_ and it made his fingers twitch, made his bones quake on the inside. Clint got his other knee down, one leg either side of one of Steve’s, and moved forward, and Steve’s lungs stuttered over their next breath, his heart felt fit to burst inside of him. He half expected them to ridicule him - to belittle him for following the ruse for so long, but neither of them stopped and it hurt the back of his throat.

“Uh…” he said, not quite a no but close, all of it close to the surface, all of it like light he couldn’t keep out of his eyes, and he felt his fingers twitch, felt Natasha’s hands tighten on his shoulders.

It was like trying not to get burned on something held too close, trying not to make contact with a live wire, his whole body trying to shrink back as it prickled head to foot even as all his hair stood on end, like it was trying to reach- Like it was reaching out to-

His face felt strange as Clint leaned right over him, as Clint’s face came up over his own, and there was maybe a good six inches of space between them but his cheeks felt tight, his skin felt warm, and he could feel Clint’s weight shift until Clint could plant one hand by Steve’s waist and lean on it, could see Clint raise a hand in his periphery right down by his hips. He couldn’t get a breath, shook his head and then tried to lean back, away, stopped by the mattress. He wanted to stop the feeling of it, the tight, hurt, shivery feel of it but he didn’t want to stop Clint, he wanted to stem the tide he could feel welling, but he wanted Clint more and how, how could that-

“I know,” Clint said quietly, like Steve was a wild animal, “s’okay.” 

And then, like a marionette, out of his control, his body felt lifted, pushed upward without his consent and his throat hurt and his ears rang and his eyes stung and Clint-

Clint _touched_ him, settled one big, warm palm against his waist and slid it upward as he brought himself down over Steve, and Steve’s whole face screwed up like it hurt, “ah, _ah,_ ” he managed, higher the second time, a tight rasp where the first had been a warning as his body tried to get away, straining upwards to try and escape the swell of pain that bubbled up in his chest. 

And then the whole coiled spring unwound on the inside, it all rose and poured upward from his lungs. The next breath Steve took in was a gasp, and he bit back a sob, holding on for dear life as Clint came to rest against him, hands in fists in the back of Clint’s shirt.

“There you go,” Clint said softly, Steve gasped again, his mouth a grimace, his eyes shut tight as he groaned, ears ringing.

It didn’t stop wet heat leaking down his temples and into his hair, didn’t change the pain in his throat, but his chest felt like it had been cracked open, felt like he’d been unspooled from the center and broken into pieces. 

He couldn’t speak, could barely _breathe_ , he pressed his face to Clint’s neck and shook and it _hurt_ , like seeing Brooklyn had hurt, like visiting Bucky’s grave had hurt. A desperate, aching need and relief so painful he wasn’t sure how he’d ever lived without it.

~

They did very little that first time. Steve wasn't able to separate himself enough from his anxiety or his memories, but it didn't matter. He didn't need sex, he needed contact. Affection. 

They helped him undress down to his underwear, sure hands where his were unsteady, and they pulled up cool sheets around him when they lay him between them in their bed.

“I,” he said, his voice rough, his hands still shaking and his eyes down, but they didn't need to speak.

They swept his skin with gentle fingers so that his body arched between them, pressed themselves against him to ground him in their presence and, when he let himself be kissed, it was flat against the mattress, with the metal tags pressing into his spine like a memory.

~

They stayed wrapped around him that first afternoon, spent the remaining hours of the day just in contact, necking and touching, quiet and gentle, and making sure he was more accustomed to their presence, to their hands and bodies, to their sharing his space.

Bucky used to promise Steve he'd get through each bout of fever or sickness or pneumonia same as he'd promise nobody'd ever take Steve to Bellvue. Still, Steve never felt as reassured when Bucky promised him he'd be safe from asylums as he did when Bucky said they'd make it through winter, or have enough food for the coming month, or that the pneumonia would pass soon enough. After all, you couldn't punish them with pneumonia for being in love.

***

It took them two weeks to work up to sex.

He wanted it, that was _blatantly_ obvious. While he still preferred to be under bedclothes or half-undressed instead of naked, he got hard almost instantly, whatever they did and, though he shied away from touches to start with, his hands slowly reached for them, his nervousness slowly ebbed. He went from keeping his hands by his side to touching gentle hands to their shoulders, their faces, fingertips fluttering with the tremor. He changed from brief, uncertain kisses to baring skin and opening his mouth to them, moaning soft sounds over his tongue that they swallowed from him easily. He went from rocking his hips against nothing, sufficing with the sparse friction of the inside of his jeans, to spreading his legs to accommodate theirs. In fact, his first orgasm with another person in this century was with Clint, who tangled their legs and hitched Steve close against him while they made out on the fresh sheets, all of them dressed, all of them quiet, eight days after he'd agreed to the arrangement.

Natasha lay behind Steve, because it just so happened to be Clint that he'd turned to on the bed, and so she pressed her breasts to his back and scratched her fingernails over his scalp with one hand, the other around his torso to rub at his nipples through his cotton shirt. They were pressed together, all three of them, and so she felt it too when his hips rolled forward against Clint's thigh harder than than they had before, when they stayed pushed forward for longer. 

She felt it when his breath hitched, in the expansion of his ribcage against her, and heard him moan into Clint's mouth, 

"Mmh, _mmmhh,"_

And then, with a gasp through his nose and a shudder that shook the whole bed, he broke the kiss and choked on air, hips so far forward so fast that it left her cold, that it pushed Clint back.

Clint held onto him, murmured little things and small sounds to him, and Steve didn't pump his hips forward, didn't chase his orgasm by using Clint like a place to get off - he held himself almost completely still, stiffened up completely, and ground his hips forward only after Clint hauled him close with both hands on Steve's ass, once, slowly, and then a second time, no more quickly than the first. 

Steve made soft, strained little sounds, his head back, his eyes closed, mouth open, hands fisted tight in the back of Clint's shirt, and then, after a long few moments, the tension left him all at once, and he sagged into the mattress between the two of them.

"There you go," Clint was saying quietly, "that's it, that's great, you're right here," and Steve was shaking, giving brief, quiet little gasps as his body came down. 

He'd started to say things, too, 'oh,' and 'fuck,' and a couple of little involuntary noises, and they kissed his skin and stroked his body and brushed his hair out of his eyes while he shook between them and held on like he was drowning.

They lay that way quietly for a few long minutes, until Steve put his head back enough to rest it against Natasha's collarbone, and then she ran her hand from his chin, along the underside of his jaw, down his throat and down to his chest. 

"You're alright?" she said, and Steve nodded minutely. 

"Yeah," he gasped, "yeah, can I- I, please-"

She lifted her head and looked at Clint, who gave her a thumbs-up with his right hand, swept it over to one side in a sign they both recognized.

_Another._

She nodded, put her head back down and pressed her breasts against him a little more.

"You can go again?" she said quietly, rubbing his chest in big circles with her palm, while Clint resituated his leg between Steve's.

"It's okay," Clint told him. "It's okay, that's why we're here, Steve. You just take what you need."

"Uhn," he answered, barely more than a whisper, "uhn, _please,_ please."

***

After that, she wanted to push him, and Clint told her not to. She knew he could take it, of course he could. She knew he could be coaxed into a great many things that were good for his state of mind, but Clint insisted they take it at Steve's pace.

"He can handle more than you think he can," she told him, and he waved her off.

"He can handle anything we throw at him," Clint answered. "But it's a courtesy to take it at his pace. He's not here to fuck, he needs a connection. Let him form one he trusts."

"He trusts us already," she countered, and still Clint wouldn't change his mind.

"Doesn't hurt to strengthen that, does it?" he asked. 

She rolled her eyes but acquiesced - a gift she'd never give anyone else. 

So it was another three days before he'd rut against _her_ leg until he came, Clint plastered to his back instead, his mouth open against her throat, hands fitted tight and hot at her waist. By this time, she'd worked him down to his underwear - shorts and an undershirt, because of course he wore an undershirt - and he tried to hold it back, tried to warn her, mortified by the dampness that spread across the front of his shorts.

"Sorry," he gasped, "I'm sorry," and she shook her head.

"Don't worry," she said. "It's part of sex, enjoy it. You can't affect me - I take precautions."

And his face was _glowing_ it was so red, she could feel the heat coming off him, so she kept her hands on his hips instead, made sure he knew she didn't want him to leave, and said, 

"You can go again?"

And Steve collapsed against her with a desperate little noise and said,

"Oh, I…Please," just like he had for Clint.

***

He let them see him naked for the first time one afternoon shortly afterward. They turned up the heat in the room so that he wouldn't be uncomfortable, spent the afternoon kissing and touching, keeping him safe between them until they could unfasten closures and ease fingers past hems and waistbands.

They unwrapped him slowly, like a precious thing, and kept his attention by prolonging the contact, building his anticipation. Keeping touches light and kisses sweet, they pulled him from the shell he kept around himself, like a frightened creature whose trust could be earned by slowly teaching it to leave its hideaway, and, eventually, he lay on the bed between them, with Clint undressed for the most part, and her down to her underwear herself.

He trusted implicitly - that was the thing. Once, a long time ago, she and Clint had run one or two missions like this, preyed on the confidence of a couple of arrogant people to kill them when they were needy and defenceless like this.

She didn't regret it. 

Still, although that experience was useful now, this situation was completely different. Steve trusted them not to hurt him, just as their targets had. Steve wanted them for their connection, their synchronicity, and their (frankly) impressive good looks, just as their targets had. Steve lay naked, and shaking, and desperately aroused between them, but he wanted. He _needed_ , and trusted them to take care of him, vulnerable in a way their targets hadn't been. 

For their targets, naked had been a stepping stone on the way to getting what they felt they deserved. For Steve, it was new, and terrifying, and a display of trust so easily betrayed she could scarce believe he'd submit to it.

She could kill him easily. From here, she didn't even need to leave - if she wanted to, if she were so inclined, she could cause him immeasurable pain and then end his life. Her targets had been cocksure and self-centered, preening and unshakable, and here was the world's only supersoldier, terrified and unobtrusive, hands twitching with the barely-suppressed desire to cover himself, red from scalp to toes with apologies held just behind his chattering teeth.

It was Clint who took him in hand and stroked him to orgasm, because Clint was a man and therefore more experienced at handling a dick the way its owner liked, but Steve's hand found hers, he sought her out for kisses, asked her for the mercy of relief just as often as he asked Clint.

When he came, it was with his eyes shut and his head back, blocking out the world to better enjoy a thing he'd always held so private. And then, after that, when his eyes opened and the tension left him, when he blew out a measured breath and looked at each of them, kissed them both in turn with his eyes wide open, Clint looked him over.

Steve lifted his head and looked, too, and then let it drop back into the pillow.

But, this time when Clint signed ' _another?_ ' with his fist and his thumb, this time when Steve nodded, lower lip caught between his teeth in a manner both coy and hopeful, he did so with his back flat and his shoulders back and his eyes alight. 

"Please," he said - and this time, it was almost with a smile.

***

“It's,” Steve whispered, shaking his head. “I know it's not...” He swallowed hard, closed his eyes. “I know it's not...step- stepping out, it-”

His mouth dropped open, brow furrowing as Clint sealed his mouth over one nipple, arching into it because he couldn't help it – he was far more sensitive than either of them had considered, enjoyed a lot of things that one or both of them did not. 

Natasha liked it if you sucked her nipples but didn't actively seek it. Alone, she preferred clitoral overstimulation to receiving any sort of penetration– she'd pull back the hood of her clitoris and hold a vibrator against the smooth, pink nub as her toes curled, and then keep going past one orgasm, maybe two, until she had to put the vibrator down and rub over the tingling flesh with her fingertips, curling up into a ball as she laughed.

Clint didn't mind anal, or nipple play, but neither did very much for him. When he was by himself, he preferred to tease himself for hours, only touching himself occasionally, waiting until he'd pushed himself to make it last before curling his thumb and forefinger around the head and pulsing the grip until he came.

Steve, though? They hadn't run into much he didn't like so far, even though he hadn't made it past simple touching for the most part.

It hadn't been hard to predict that he'd like being taken care of, or that they'd need to hide it if they tried. She didn't know how he'd lived so long before the serum considering his absolute refusal to allow himself respite at the hands of others, but if they made it a learning experience, if they taught him alongside the care, he was far more inclined to allow it.

That was what they were doing now, of course - some kind of hilarious parody of her skills. The stories of the Black Widow abounded, of course they did. She used seduction, if she wanted to, but the people who'd experienced it firsthand never really lived to spread the truth about it. Still, the irony hadn't escaped her – the one type of interrogation technique she'd never use on an enemy, she'd perfected as an instrument of persuasion to use on a friend.

His body rolled, shoulder to hip – he definitely wanted, that was certain. In fact it was painfully obvious, not least because of the way his cock strained upward into the air while he kept himself still on the mattress. They didn't even have to ask now – they'd seen him a couple of times before (like some kind of deranged sex therapists, she thought with a smirk, one appointment or two,) and he still wasn't confident enough in his own body, confident enough in his own restraint, that he'd reciprocate unless they told him to.

That made it easy. She'd told him to lie back, and then they'd worked him up with hands and mouths and she didn't doubt for a second that a good deal of his compliance with her requests had to do with the fact that he liked strong, confident women in positions of power. She had no trouble believing that he'd've dragged himself naked belly-down over barbed wire if Peggy Carter had told him to, as long as she told him he was a good boy at the end of it. 

He wasn't exactly submissive, not really. He just _loved_ to make other people happy and be told he’d done so, which was something that had surprised her so much – firebrand, kind-of-an-asshole, doesn't-follow-orders, desperate to please.

So lying as still as he could on the white bedclothes, with his head on the white pillows and his skin so pale in comparison, hair turned dark with sweat, she learned over him, fingertips drawing circles around his nipple, making sure he focused on her eyes while Clint's clever fingers barely brushed his frenulum every few seconds. 

His whole body was shivering, the insides of his thighs trembling when she looked.

“But it feels like it?” she said, and Steve hissed a breath in through his teeth, fingers curling against the outsides of his thighs even though nothing was keeping them there, and she smiled down at him.

She wasn't used to him enough to be naked just yet and, although Clint was, he'd opted for a loose pair of jeans. She chose the longline bra and lacy boyshorts combo that made her look good without showing much skin, but Steve? Well. His eyes didn't drift, she noted. Whether it was the manners he'd been taught or whether he was just that arrested by her face, she never saw his gaze dip below her lips, and she only saw it go that far when she spoke.

Probably left over from his being partially deaf – Clint looked at her mouth in the same way whenever she spoke, too.

Still, it meant that he was the one naked one out of the three of them, and she looked him over the next time he closed his eyes. 

If he had to fight naked, if he had to fight _her_ naked, he'd win. There was almost no situation she could think of in which he wouldn't. But still, to have him spread out between them, his skin flushed and slick, his body trembling and his fingers stiff, with no barrier between him and them and a few of the most easily-damageable parts of his anatomy available to questing fingers...It was odd, to say the least, a total contradiction of his style, an opposition to his professional personality.

Fun.

He flinched when she ran her fingernails lightly over the soft, vulnerable flesh between his legs, flushing even darker when she smiled down at him.

“We don't have to do that,” Clint told him, “not if you don't want.”

But that was the thing, and she could see it even before he answered.

“I want it,” he said on a breath, frowning as though it was something to be ashamed of, “I just-”

Clint must have done it again, Steve's whole body drawing bowstring tight again as he bared his teeth, and Natasha gave Clint a look while Steve's eyes were closed. Clint just looked a little sheepish – how was she supposed to find things out if Clint kept cutting him off?

“ _Oh,_ please,” he gasped, and Natasha smoothed the hair back off his forehead with gentle fingers, waited until his long lashes lifted.

“I know you miss it,” she said, “like you missed kissing, like you missed holding.”

She knew too that he must feel terrible to be in such a predicament – a body that wanted without the body it wanted. Love didn't have to factor into it, but he'd need to learn how to accept a sexual relationship without. He was doing better than she expected – probably because, really, the bond between teammates was visceral enough for him. If she were really honest, it had become something much deeper for her, too.

She turned her head, watched Clint run a single fingertip from the root of Steve's cock very slowly up the shaft, up, and up.

“Would it help you,” she said, as Clint's fingertip stroked over Steve's frenulum, “if _I_ fucked you instead of Clint?”

Steve's eyes rolled back, his body going rigid, and then his mouth opened, one hand lifting enough that she saw it out of the corner of her eye before she moved in to kiss him. He responded desperately, kissing her back as though it might kill him not to, jerking hard enough once, twice, that she wondered if he might bite her.

He didn't, though – hadn't up to this point, either. 

Clint, apparently, wasn't finished with him, and she felt a sudden hard breath, then another, and then he made a soft, pitiful noise in the back of his throat and sort of melted.

When she pulled away, she saw that Clint was just wrapping up wiping his hand and was about to use one of the wet wipes they kept in the bedside table to clean Steve up.

“Would that help you, _malysh_?” she said, and he frowned a little, chest still heaving, and looked at Clint. 

Clint shrugged, swept his hand over Steve's shoulder as though he were brushing lint away, followed the line of Steve's cheekbone with his thumb, his lips, his collarbone.

“She's good at it,” he said, matter-of-factly, and Steve wet his lips as he turned his head back and stared up at her, at her eyes.

“Can...I...” he said slowly, and she waited because they both had the patience to let him speak for himself. “Try?”

“Of course,” she said. “Now?”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I want...to...” he looked a little confused. “I don't know if the name is the same for you as it is for me,” he said, “I don't know the words now but, can I go, uh. Pearl-fishin’ on you?”

There was a moment where she wasn’t sure, then thought she might know and figured she must be wrong. She cocked her head in question anyway.

“Uh,” he said. “How about goin’ _down south,_ is that…?”

She felt her eyebrows raise and looked at Clint. Clint looked mildly surprised, too. 

“I-Is that…? I don't have to, if that's too far but I'd like…uh, to see it. Can- Uh, can I see it?"

Certain now, Natasha raised one eyebrow, feeling contrary and a little indecisive. 

“Can you see what?” she asked, because she knew he didn’t like to say.

She knew his next move would be drawing back, away, to the relative safety of Clint, because she wasn’t taking the obvious hint and finishing the thought for him. She felt a little bad, too - this wasn’t the way to handle someone like Steve. She could see she was right a moment later - his smile wasn’t quite so broad at the corners, the light not so bright in his eyes. If she did this too often, he’d learn to count it as rejection, which was not the objective. But also not something she could help. 

“Can I,” he said, and then the pink over his nose darkened, he averted his gaze. “Uh.”

“You can ask anything,” Clint told him, “doesn’t matter what you ask, we’ll answer just the same.”

“I don’t,” he said, and then he looked up at Clint from under his eyebrows. “I don’t know what words I want.”

“What for?” Clint said, and Steve looked back at her face, looked at her breasts in her pretty bra, at the matching panties.

Then he looked at her face again for a long few moments, some of the discomfort dissipating, and looked at Clint. 

“I wanna go down on her but I wanna take a look first.” Clint nodded, pushed a small strand of his hair off Steve’s forehead. “I could just say that, couldn’t I?”

Clint smiled, nodded again, and Steve looked at her.

“I wanna,” he said and then, adorably, remembered his manners, “I’d like to go down on you, if you’ll let me,” he said, “and I was hopin’ you’d let me take a look first. Just…”

“Why?” she answered, feeling obstinate now, and Clint gave her a look where Steve couldn’t see, _Oh, come on_ , but part of her really wasn’t happy about it. She’d let him, of course she would. Maybe not today though. Why should she let him? 

“’Cause I…like lookin’,” Steve answered, and he’d gone quiet now, a lot more still. He’d settled into what he wanted, that was what that look meant, and his eyes were half closed. “I think it’s pretty and I ain’t seen a lady like that for a long time, miss gettin’ up close and bein’ careful with her. You don’t gotta say yes, I know it ain’t easy’ta let me in, it’s okay.”

For a long few seconds, none of them did anything, and then he leaned back. There went that expression again - less hurt, but still disappointment.

Still, though, she didn’t want to let him in. She didn’t _want_ to let him have what he wanted, but not because she didn’t want him to have it.

“No,” she said, and his shoulders sagged - God, did he know he was doing this? Did he know he made himself so difficult to disappoint?

“That’s okay,” he said anyway, disheartened, and that was _worse_

She rolled her eyes.

 _“Radi boga,_ your sad puppy routine,” and she sat up a little, spread her legs, it was only an orgasm, Jesus, she could manage to let him have what he wanted for five minutes. “If you want it so badly, you can-”

“What?” Steve said, and now he looked different.

Now he looked irritated. So did Clint.

“What do you mean?” Steve said, sitting up just as Clint opened his mouth to speak - he shut it again a moment later. “No, you already said no, don’t say yes to me just because you think I look sad, what kind of example is that?”

“Example?” she said, mildly offended, and he glanced at Clint.

“Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me?” he said, and he seemed just as offended. “I can wait. I can live without it forever if you —”

There weren’t many people who’d ever said that to her. _I can live without it forever_. Not many to whom she’d given a choice, fewer still those she’d allowed to be aware of that fact. She could think of three others, and one of those was Clint. And suddenly it didn’t seem so bad.

Suddenly it wasn’t letting him do anything - there was no attraction, of course. She didn’t work that way, had never worked that way. But he was kind and strong and compassionate, and had cared enough to ask, cared enough to do what she wanted when she answered his request. 

“— want, or even if you let me I can only ever do it with the blindfold on, it’s yours. You’re you, it’s not about what I want, don’t say —” 

The apprehension seemed to dissipate, and she absolutely refused to think _it’s because you know you can trust him_ even though she was almost certain that was what it was. 

He was just young, just inexperienced, just curious, just lonely and missing something as natural as every other appetite, and she could give it. More to the point, she could refuse it, and he wouldn’t grow angry or resentful, wouldn’t demand that she provide, wouldn’t ask for something and take it if she wasn’t willing to give. 

“—that I can do whatever I want just because I look sad, you think I can’t restrain myself enough to —”

“Steve,” she said, and - again to his credit, how had she taken so long to notice how in tune with people he could be - he stopped immediately.

He was good at it, she realized, at people. Emotionally shy and ashamed of his physical appearance as a young man, he’d been rejected and overlooked by so many. But he was _good at people._ His judge of character, his observational assessment, his ability to read into microexpressions and listen to unspoken words. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I get a little-”

“It’s okay,” Clint said, and then he gave her a hard look, “you’re right, Cap.”

“No,” she answered. “I meant it, a moment ago, when I said no. But I mean it now, when I’m saying yes.”

Steve looked confused.

“Why?” he said, and it didn’t take her any time to hear her own inflection parroted back at her.

“Because I thought I didn’t want to,” she answered, “but actually I just wanted to be sure that I could trust you.”

His eyebrows went up then, and he looked at Clint for confirmation. She tried not to be offended - it made sense he’d look to Clint, not just because Clint knew her well enough to know her mind but because he knew her well enough to tell Steve if she was lying.

Clint held up both hands, shook his head.

“Seems legit,” he said, and Steve looked at her, searched her face.

She watched a slow, pleased smile take over his expression, the warmth returning to his eyes, the breadth to his smile.

“Really?” he said, and she nodded. “Can…” And then, wasn’t that interesting, his eyes darkened as his gaze dipped, he wet his lips. “Can I use my mouth?”

“That’s what going down on me means, isn’t it?” she said, her annoyance feigned this time.

She looked at Clint for pretend confirmation. Clint nodded.

“So I’m given to understand,” he said, and Steve made a noise. 

“You two wiseasses,” he said, “how ‘bout my fingers?”

“You can use your fingers,” she said, “if you’re gentle. They’re big fingers.”

He nodded leaning forward some.

“I’ll grab for the slick if I do,” he said, “and just one or two maybe.”

She nearly corrected him. _We call it lube,_ but, actually, _Clint_ called it lube, _she_ called it lube. Steve called it ‘slick,’ so what? Steve called it ‘pearl-fishing’ and ‘laying-bricks’ and she knew she’d heard him say ‘shoot the works’ at least once. Why shouldn’t he call it what he wanted?

“I wanna,” he said, and then shook his head, really tried hard to speak. “I’m gonna get on my stomach, put your feet over my shoulders, that a’right?”

“I think I can handle that,” she smirked, and he smiled in a way that was too soft for her to look at really, meant a little more than she wanted it to.

He wasn’t in love - she’d no doubt that if he ever even thought about it, it’d be visible from space - but he cared one hell of a lot. 

“If you’re not careful,” she said, “a face like that’ll get you killed.”

“Mhm,” he said, without even pretending to care. “That’s why I got you people on my six, ain’t it?”

She turned so she could lie back against the pillows, and he shuffled forward on his knees until he was between hers, very close, very naked, maybe half hard. 

“You gonna keep on that brassiere?” he said softly, and she put her shoulders back.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Doesn’t mean to gotta keep your hands off what’s in it, though.”

His tongue came out a little, pressed against his lower lip.

“And my mouth?”

“Or your mouth,” she answered, and it was strange.

She knew from anyone else this would be enticing. This would be the way to flirt, to show interest. This would be seduction, and yet she didn’t think for a minute that he misunderstood.

“And you stop me if you change your mind,” he said.

“I could say the same thing,” she answered, and he huffed a laugh through his nose. 

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen but I promise all the same,” and wasn’t that just Steve all over. Then he leaned down, one hand either side of her hips, and stuck his face in her cleavage. “Hmmm.”

She laughed, gave Clint a look as she pointed at the back of Steve’s head, _can you believe this idiot?_ and Clint was already smiling.

“Yep,” Steve said, his voice muffled. “Definitely tits.”

Clint barked a laugh this time and, okay, she hadn’t expected that from him. When he lifted his head and smirked at her, she rolled her eyes and slapped him on the shoulder.

“ ‘Definitely tits?’ ” she parroted. 

“Like ninety-nine percent sure. I’ven’t seen too many though, lemme check-” He started to lower his head again and she shoved at his temple instead, startled into a laugh herself when he rocked sideways.

She could feel the incredulity on her face - let it show because she might as well. 

“You haven’t seen any like these,” she said after a moment, and he drew back, pressed his hand to his chest like a drama queen and closed his eyes.

“Very true,” he said, solemn, opened his eyes again. “Russian.”

This time she lifted her foot and kicked him in the hip. He just grinned for a moment or two, then he nodded in her general direction.

“Still yes?” he said, and she didn’t let the surprise show on her face, didn’t let her mouth drop open.

He was _distracting_ her? Distracting _her_? 

“Still yes,” she said, and he smiled, all teeth. 

“Great,” he said. “Want me to get those or are you gonna get ‘em?”

And, that was right, of course, she’d need to take the panties off if he was going to get his mouth on her. She thought about it for a moment or two, and then just opened her legs a little. It felt strange to do it because she wanted to, strange to do it without ulterior motive. A little overwhelming, actually, but Clint was right there, he wouldn’t let Steve do anything wrong. 

Steve took it for the permission it was, and shuffled back until he could get his legs out behind him, until he could pull his arms back and essentially do a push-up and then, well, then he was level with her panties and she could feel how warm his breaths were because it was skittering along her inner thighs.

“Hmmm,” he said again, but contented this time where he’d been messing around before. 

He tucked one hand in towards himself, glanced up at her face, and then settled his huge fingers on her mons pubis and just stroked her through her panties with his thumb. He had a light touch - it was still a surprise that he could be this gentle, although it shouldn’t have been by now - and he pressed the fabric just slightly between her labia, just enough that she could feel where his thumb was. All the blood rushed there in a sting of warmth, and she fought the urge to tilt her hips down and press against the bed.

“Do you want me to talk?” he said softly, still moving his thumb, and it was nice, actually. 

She’d have to pay attention to it otherwise it would move over from pleasant to painful, lace could be unforgiving that way.

“Do you want to talk?” she answered, and he rolled his eyes.

“Safe, sane, consensual,” he said, because he learned fast and remembered well. “Do you want me to talk?”

She pursed her lips and glanced at Clint. Clint looked like he approved of Steve’s sentiment, the traitor. 

“If you want to talk,” she said, “it won’t put me off.”

“That’s nice,” Steve answered, nodding. “I’ll probably say somethin’ stupid, fair warnin’.”

“Why change the habit of a lifetime?” she asked. “Don’t push these aside - they’re expensive and they’ll stretch.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Steve said. 

And then he leaned forward and craned his neck and-

His mouth couldn’t form a seal, not over the lace, not when he was doing little more than pressing kisses to the fabric. Open mouth though, she could see the tip of his tongue whenever he drew back, could feel the lace begin to cool when he didn’t have his mouth over it, and he pressed with his thumb on one side, just opening her up a little. The panties were still in the way but she could feel the difference.

“Hmm,” he said again, but this time he had his mouth against her. 

It felt nice, that much was certain. She could stand to have him do it some more, and she spread her legs a little. 

He was smiling when he pulled away.

“Don’t be smug,” she said, “it doesn’t suit you.”

“I was bein’ an ornery bastard before you was born,” he said. “Smug’s like an old friend at this point.”

He did it again, put his mouth on her through the fabric, over her clitoris, his tongue pressing the fabric against her, and then pulled away again.

“Can I see?” he said, quiet, reverent. “Will you show me?”

She smirked, pushed him in the middle of his forehead, and he grinned, moved his head and his hand away.

She got her fingers under the waistband and planted her feet to lift her hips and get the panties down over her ass, lifted her feet once the lace was ‘round her thighs, and crunched up to get the fabric over her knees and down her calves, off her feet. 

He took them off her before she had chance to throw them, set them aside carefully, down by his hip. Clint reached forward and took them, put them down by his own hip instead, out of the way. 

It wasn’t too hard to spread her legs again after, she realized, wasn’t too difficult to part her knees and let her hips take the weight of her legs. Her body wanted, too, her nipples were hard, and all the blood was making her clitoris feel swollen. She was very aware of it all of a sudden, of the top of Steve’s dirty-blond head, and the fabric of the bedclothes against her ass, and where Steve’s hands were - very close, just like his face.

She wasn’t worried, or reluctant, she wasn’t unsure. She was just…

Unused to it. Clint was the only person who did this for her any more, and she liked it, liked the way it felt, liked how little she had to do to participate. 

She lifted one hand and brought it between her legs, spread her labia with two fingers - it stretched the flesh a little, made her clitoris ache in the way she liked. 

“Well look at you,” Steve said, and then he licked the pad of his thumb and drew it up from the hard ridge below her clitoris all the way up over the little nub of it, and it made her tighten up, made her clench. “Isn’t this a pretty little thing? May I?”

She lifted her hand away again and he replaced it with his own instead, fingers on her mons pubis again, his thumb pulling back the hood of her clitoris instead this time. 

He stared at it, his eyes half-closed, his face red over the bridge of his nose, and then he licked the pad of his other thumb and eased it over her clitoris. He used his right hand, made slow, smooth circles clockwise - clockwise for him anyway - and her leg twitched inward. Slow and smooth like that, without the hood to protect her, it felt hot, almost like a burn. It made everything tingle, not just her clitoris, and she shook her head.

“Other way,” she said, surprised to find her voice rougher. “Counter-clockwise.” He switched hands, licked his thumbs again, held the hood back with his right and made circles with the left and _that_ was better. “Mmhyeah,” she said, wetting her lips where they’d gone dry.

He made more circles, just as slow, didn’t speed up or press harder, just kept on going, maybe once a second, and she tilted her hips up to scoot her ass closer, spread her legs a little wider.

“This okay?” Steve asked, and she nodded, brought her hands up to squeeze over her breasts once, trying to ease the ache in her nipples some. 

“It’s right,” she said, and he chuckled. 

“Good.”

She looked at Clint, who looked like he always did when she was trying to get off - halfway between turned on and proud - and then Steve stopped drawing the little circles and, instead, held her open with a thumb either side of her clitoris, fingers up on her pubic bone to hold the flesh up, to keep the hood back.

“Look at this, huh, pretty little thing’s all swole,” he said softly, tilting his head, breathing very close to her, “poor little pearl.”

And where was _that_ coming from? That wasn’t the guy who stuttered his way through greetings. 

“Having fun?” she said.

“I love lookin’ at this,” he murmured, moved one index finger to stroke over the top of it and _that_ was intense, “all pink and smooth and tiny, wouldn’t think it could do so much.”

He didn’t really appear to be addressing her, certainly wasn’t expecting an answer but who cared, really?

“You gonna do something about it?” she asked, and he looked up at her, smiling. 

“Sure am,” he said. 

He wet his lips, pulled his hands outward just a little more - it felt good all by itself, the stretch of flesh - and then he drew a line with his tongue - pushed just the tip inside her and then drew the soft point of it up, up and over her clitoris, spreading wetness she could feel. He did it again, and a third time, followed the shape of her labia, pushed his tongue between them and then moved his thumbs to lick behind.

She could feel her clitoris straining, the urge to clench down rising, and then the next time his tongue came up, the next time he slicked her with her own wetness, he sealed his mouth over her clitoris and sucked hard, tongue flickering over it inside his mouth.

“ _Oh,_ ” she bit out, mouth staying open on a gasp.

She squeezed at her breasts again, pinched at her nipples through the bra, and he shook his head minutely, sucked harder, started a rhythm with his mouth and his tongue.

She took a breath through her nose, let it out slowly, moved her hips against his face a little, and he hummed quietly. His humming didn’t do much for her - not when she had a small but reliable collection of vibrators - but it didn’t seem like he’d done it for any other reason except than just to do it. She saw his hips flex, too - Clint caught the movement out of the corner of his eyes, she saw him out of the corner of hers.

“You’ll be there a while if you want her to come,” Clint said quietly, reaching out to settle his hand in the small of Steve’s back, and Steve nodded, drew off with a noise like a broken kiss, and even that felt good, the breaking of that seal.

“I got nowhere to be if the two of you don’t stop me,” he said, and then he went right back to it, suckling at her clitoris almost in time with her heartbeat, and she wound her fingers in his hair when he didn't need as much instruction as she'd considered.

She supposed, as she dug her heels into the backs of his shoulders, that _somebody_ had to have taught him, or else he had to have watched videos, there was no way he was new to this, not even slightly. When he mentioned others, he must have meant Agent Carter, the girls he toured with, perhaps. Or else, he’d been getting a lot more than he’d led them to believe (which, still, made just as much sense - who’d be less likely to kiss and tell than Steve Rogers?). She said a silent thank you to whichever method it might have been as he sucked her clit hard enough that her whole body shivered, and dropped her head back into the pillows as she laughed.


	5. Chapter 5

***

The first time they fucked, they carefully didn't call it that.

Steve wasn't inexperienced when it came to sex, but he was inexperienced when it came to sex toys, and, as it turned out, very, _very_ into pretty people, without having yet figured out that people viewed him as one himself.

It wasn't the serum either – she didn't know what kind of ridiculous complex meant that women in the first half of the twentieth century would only date men who were taller than them or some shit, but she’d seen photographs, and little skinny Steve Rogers was only different in the breadth of his bones for all intents and purposes. Certainly the number of people who showed an interest in his face now meant that there ought to have been a fair number interested in his face then? At least, from what she could tell. 

On her part, little skinny Steve Rogers had been the kind of piece she would've eaten alive for her own amusement. Tiny, scrawny, absolutely uncompromising and very definitely clueless, if his blood pressure had let him get it up, she could probably have blown his mind. She'd certainly have tried her best to do so back then, anyway – virgins were the best learners, especially ones as earnest as Steve. She would have considered him a personal challenge.

Maybe she'd mention it to him sometime, see if she couldn't bolster his confidence – how fun it would have been to pin the gangly firebrand he used to be and eat him out until he _cried_ just to see if she could.

She was a little better at the gentler routes these days but raw and powerful was still her favorite. She'd have to be careful with him, she knew - he was skittish enough to remind her of untamed animals, eyes a little too wild, body a little too responsive.

Clint was there, in a sleeveless tee and cutoff jeans, because it was warm today. Steve had _asked_ for him to be there, even though Nat had discussed with Clint the possibility that Steve might not want him there at all, so it was a nice surprise, actually. 

So when she and Clint had arranged towels and pillows so that Steve could lie on his stomach and basically have to do _nothing_ this first time, bodily position taken care of for him, Steve, fresh out of the shower, lowered himself into the cradle of fabric and padding and clearly did his best not to look supremely nervous. 

“How you feelin'?” Clint asked Steve, while Nat found the just-about-average-sized flesh-toned thing and put her harness on over her boyshorts. 

She wasn't about to start Steve off treating him like a size-queen, but it wasn't like he was totally new to it either, at least when it came to taking dick. He might like the neon blue and neon pink and psychedelically-marbled colors a little less, however, so she went with the only flesh-toned one she had, which was...average in the sense that it was what she'd found most men _called_ average. Plus it had _ridges_. 

“'M okay,” he said, folding his forearms under his head so he could look at Clint. "Nervous, you know. This body's a virgin."

Clint watched him for a moment, and then came to sit beside him on the bed to run the palm of his hand from the back of Steve's skull to the small of his back, and then all the way up again. Steve moved a little into the touch, eyes closing for a moment, but then he opened his eyes and looked up at Clint again.

“You sure you're okay with this?” Clint asked, and Steve nodded.

“Yeah,” he said.

What had surprised her, and probably Clint if his expression was anything to go by, was his lack of discomfort naked. He hadn't even worn a towel out of the shower, and was half hard when he settled into the cushion nest. Nat walked to the nightstand for lube, and so that Steve could see her wearing the harness and the dildo. Give him a minute to get accustomed to the idea.

He looked, didn't seem too shocked, and then followed her movements with his eyes until she walked out of his field of view.

“Not anxious?” Clint asked, and Steve just sighed softly.

“Just,” he said. “I just...want.”

Clint nodded, chewing his lower lip.

“Yeah, we gotcha," he said. "How 'bout you spread those legs, huh?"

Steve did, although he hesitated for just a moment, and Natasha took a good look at him because she could. Slightly more muscle tone than most she'd seen, but still a man on his stomach nonetheless. 

"Do you want my fingers or Clint's?" she said, and he said,

"Clint's," like he'd been thinking about it the whole time. 

Clint nodded.

"Okay," he said. "I can do that - you're okay with this? With Nat fuckin' you first?"

"Ain't never had it this way before," Steve answered. "I think I miss it too much the other ways to try that for now."

Clint nodded. That made sense - if he wanted something he could enjoy, probably best not to pick something that'd remind him of the people he'd lost. 

Clint got lube on his fingers, put the bottle down on the bed in front of Steve so they'd have to show him when they were using it, and came around to settle by Steve's hips. He faced Natasha, so that they could actually communicate, and then he slung one arm over Steve's waist and spread him with his dry hand.

"Cold and wet," Clint said over his shoulder, "so don't get a shock."

"Can you start already?" Steve answered, and Clint chuckled, nodded to himself as he glanced at Natasha. 

He went easy to start with - didn't want to startle Steve or confuse him - he didn't really know how much of this kind of thing Steve'd had before, but he did know that Steve wasn't freaking out about it the way they'd both be concerned that he might.

"You done this before, Cap?"

"Alone or together?" Steve answered. "Yes either way."

Clint pressed the pad of his thumb over Steve's hole, spread the lube over textured flesh with gentle fingers, and then just drew little circles over the skin. He could see Steve turn his head, not enough to actually see backwards, not enough to look fully over his shoulder, but enough that Clint was aware of him.

"Ready?" Clint said, and Steve spread his legs just a little more, pressed back.

"Yeah," he said, "c'mon, please?" 

Clint nodded.

"Yeah, sure," he said. 

He eased his thumb in first, the pad downward just from the way he was sitting, and Steve's head went back, he could see the tips of Steve's hair. He could also _feel_ Steve's response, hear him too - Steve clenched down and then opened up, moaned not unsubstantially, and then dropped his head into the pillows in front of him. 

_"Huuaahh, sorry,"_ he said, voice muffled, and Clint stroked his free hand over Steve's flank.

"S'okay," he said, "s'alright, don't apologize, that's what I want, no? Wanna know you're havin' fun."

"Oh, I am I am," Steve said, and pushed his face into the pillow more. _"God."_

"You didn't do this for yourself?" Natasha said, and Steve's hips flexed against the bedclothes, the cushions. 

"Not the same," he said, and then, "oh, _oh_ ," Clint looked up at Natasha - he was barely doing anything to Steve besides wiggling his thumb a little, God only knew what he'd do once Nat got inside of him. His hands were fisted in the bedclothes and his knuckles were white already, and Clint looked at her. 

"Wanna come like this?" he said.

And Nat cocked her head, interested, but Steve answered without any ambiguity.

"No," he moaned, "get more in me, get more, I want-" he swallowed hard and then lifted his head, "please, I want it in me, you don't have to fuck me just put somethin' "

"Sure," she said, and reached over him for the lube. "Two heads are better than one, right?" 

Steve laughed kind of oddly about that, but didn't say anything else, and Clint leaned away to give Nat room when she slicked up her fingers. 

It wasn't much of a stretch for Steve to take one of her fingers alongside Clint's thumb, and he went a little more quiet then, tensed up but didn't say so much, and Natasha started the stretch first, Clint felt her - pulled her finger away from his thumb and started rubbing at Steve's muscles. 

"Mmhh," he said, face-down in the bedclothes, and he pressed back against them, dug his knees in to make it easier.

Natasha flicked her head to one side - unspoken _out of the way,_ but Clint shook his head.

"She wants to take over, Cap," he said.

"Steve," Steve answered, and Clint nodded.

"Okay, Steve - Nat wants to take over."

Steve made an odd noise then, not quite a whine, not quite a moan. 

"Yeah," he said, "that's fine just-" He gave another groan when Clint withdrew, and then shook his head. "Fuck, is somebody gonna actually-"

"Yeah," Clint said, "but we gotta make sure you can fit it first."

"My beau was a good five and a half around," Steve answers, through teeth that aren't quite gritted, "if that thing's as average as you say it is, I'll be fine, please-"

"Wouldn't have figured you for the impatient type," Nat said, and Steve snorted - like actually snorted.

"Yeah you would," he says, "we fuckin' work together."

She smiled, shook her head.

"I'm not fucking you dry," she said a moment later. "But I'll get to it as fast as I can, all right?"

"Yeah," Steve nodded. "That'd be great."

She grabbed the lube again, pointed at Clint's hand, so Clint nodded, too, pretty much just framed Steve's ass with his hands and then spread him, and Nat got to work, with a third finger this time.

The thing was, what with Nat being ace, she looked for different things. A challenge, a test, the opportunity to look smarter than everyone else (helped substantially by the fact that she usually was). 

But Clint?

Yeah, no, pansexual Clint Barton was very much enjoying the view and would gladly take home the participation trophy, thanks very much.

Steve was very smooth and very supple and very, very cute, in that boy-next-door, wholesome-but-corruptible way. Clint knew him better, obviously - Steve Rogers was as much of a little shit as it was physically possible for him to be - but he _looked_ pure as the driven snow, until he bit his lips red and blushed right the way down. 

His balls were full and heavy between his legs and Clint stroked them just because he wanted to, stroked the backs of his fingers over Steve's perineum while Natasha stretched him open from the inside.

He lifted his head again and Clint thought he might be about to say something, but it turned out he was actually just lifting his head because his head had gone back of its own volition, and he hissed through his teeth.

"Oh, God, I really don't wanna finish 'til you're done," he said, and this time his teeth _were_ gritted. 

"If your boy was five point five, you can take this," she said, "four point five around, six long."

"Yeah, yeah, easy," Steve said, breathless, and Clint was hard because he couldn't help it - Steve was hard but his dick was tucked up between him and the bedclothes and the pillows and whatnot, and Clints was busy not getting any attention in his jeans.

"What I mean is," Natasha said, "tell me when you-"

"Now," Steve said, and she only had three fingers in him but he certainly seemed serious, and his skin was covered in lube, and Clint really hadn't gotten pegged for a while either, he'd have to ask.

"Ask nice," he said, and Natasha gave him an _oh really?_ expression, which he ignored.

"Please," Steve said, no further prompting, no coaching, and yeah okay, he'd definitely had more of a sex life before the crash than either of them had thought, "please fuck me?"

Clint would very much like to, when Steve was more comfortable. Because Clint wasn't necessarily unattached, and none of them were looking for romance, but Clint could appreciate a face and a body like Steve's when he encountered them.

Nat was looking at Clint though, because Clint was the failsafe now that one of them was actually going to do this, and Clint nodded, let go of Steve's ass (a tragedy) and lay down next to him instead.

"Hey, Steve," he said, correcting himself from Cap at the last second, and Steve turned his head on the bedclothes and looked at him.

"Hey," he breathed. "Hi."

"Nat's gonna start," Clint told him, "and I'm gonna be right here if you need me."

"Oh, God," Steve said, but it was halfway to a laugh, "no that's terrible, don't look at me."

Clint smiled, brushed the hair off Steve's forehead - he had nice hair, thick and soft and it had a mind of its own if he didn't gel it. 

"Ready?"

Nat was busy slicking up the dildo and Clint couldn't decide who he wanted to be more - her or Steve. What was more, he'd expected snark when he asked - Steve had pretty much made it crystal clear that he was ready, willing and able any time they wanted to go ahead - but, instead, he looked straight at Clint and nodded.

"I'm ready," he said, safe, sane, consensual.

Clint nodded, smiled at him.

"Good," he said, and just searched his face for a moment or two. "Good. Y'okay Nat?"

"Breathe," she answered, and Clint had expected that Steve might bury his head again, had expected he might try and hide his face as she pushed in.

Instead, he went still, Steve's smile flickered and then was gone, replaced by slack-jawed pleasure as his eyes rolled back, lashes fluttering down a moment later, head turning back over his shoulder before his breath hitched in his throat. 

His fingers curled in the bedsheets, and Clint saw the shift of his body a moment later, chest down (which meant ass up by default) before his face changed, a flush coming up on his cheeks, the corner of his mouth ticking up.

"You're kiddin,'" Clint murmured, and Steve wet his lips because he was breathing so hard they'd gone dry.

"Oh, fuh-" Steve said, and _then_ he put his head down and just kind of groaned through his teeth. 

Nat looked at Clint, one eyebrow raised, and Clint just shrugged one shoulder. She had good core strength, he knew that first hand, so it was basically up to her.

"How d'you want it?" Clint said, stroking the back of Steve's head while he got used to her. "Hard, soft, fast, slow, whaddya like?" 

"Lean," Steve rasped into the pillows and then turned his head enough to free his mouth, eyes shut tight, "lean, lean on me, get on me, hard as you can, fuck, I can take it, please, I -" 

“Steve," Clint said, hand on Steve's head.

"It's okay, I'm okay," Steve answered, and Clint slid his hand down onto the back of Steve's neck.

“Alright, breathe,” he said, “hold off on talking, don't think about this for a second, look at me.”

And Steve did. His eyes opened and he looked at Clint, and Clint rubbed the back of Steve's neck while he shook against the bed.

"You're doing great," he said, "just hold on a second for me, just take a couple seconds to breathe."

And Steve did, Clint saw him. Reigned himself in a little bit, got a better grip on his awareness of the world. 

"I'm okay," he said again, and Clint shuffled his shoulders on the bed to bring them closer, smiled at Steve.

"I know,” Clint said, nodding a little. "Just felt like a kiss, that's all, that okay?"

"Mmh," Steve nodded, craning his neck for it.

It was a little rougher than Clint had expected, but he made it last, kept them still and quiet until Steve didn't feel so much like he might work himself up too much to continue, and then he just lay still next to Steve, smiling, a calming presence to bring Steve back down a little.

"Okay?" he said quietly, and Steve nodded.

"Okay," he said, and Clint smiled.

Then he looked at Nat - who clearly thought the whole exchange was unnecessary, but also knew Clint well enough to trust his instincts - and nodded. 

"Okay."

She rolled her eyes but smiled, too, and then she set one hand on the back of Steve's shoulder and the other at the nape of his neck, and put all her weight on them, making sure she was good and steady before she pulled back.

 _"Oh,"_ Steve said, after a gasp that was a full lungful of air, and then he pressed himself down into the bed when she pushed back in, head, shoulders, chest - either he was letting her move him or she was giving it everything, and it was probably both.

She gave him a few of those long, slow strokes with it, and Clint lay next to him, his hand on the small of Steve's back instead, a grounding presence where Nat was giving what he asked for.

She went harder, a little faster, and he tilted his hips to meet her, to drive her deeper, and Clint saw the shape of his face change when she started thrusting in earnest. His mouth opened and his eyes shut tight, and then he started grinding his head down against the pillows and the bedclothes.

Nat nodded at him, frowning as she concentrated, and Clint nodded.

"Y'okay?" he said, and Steve moaned softly, nodded fast.

"Yeah," he breathed, "yeah, yeah," and she wet her lips, moved her feet.

Clint lifted his head and held his hands out, palms up, then made a fist with his thumb and pinky extended, tapped his chin with it, the palm directed inward. _What's wrong?_

She answered by lifting her hand from Steve's neck to hold it out, palm down, knuckles bent slightly as she moved it downward a few inches.

 _Short_.

Clint laughed, couldn't help it.

Steve opened his eyes _instantly,_ expression wary, and Clint rubbed his back gently as she withdrew.

"Not you, hold on," he said. "She's too short to get a good rhythm."

"Fuck that," Steve answered, did a push-up on the padding, and started hauling bedclothes and pillows out from under himself. 

He tested it once, then pushed himself back up and moved some more stuff around.

"Now?" he said, once he was back in the bedclothes, looking back over his shoulder at her.

She angled the dildo downwards, cocked her head.

"Yeah," she said, matter of fact, and he smiled - had a hell of a smile, actually, Clint must never have seen it before - and settled.

The next time she pushed in, he said,

"Mmh- _hmm,_ hmm," and scraped his teeth over his lower lip, head back as far as it would go.

She didn't make him wait any longer, either, started thrusting again, and Clint stroked Steve's face, settled one hand on Steve's cheek and rubbed his thumb over Steve's lip. 

Nat tsked and shook her head, and then planted her hand on the back of Steve's skull and shoved it down into the bed.

He made a happy little noise and honest-to-God stuck his ass up a little more and then, well-

"Ohn, ohn fuck, ohn, _fuck_ , fuck-"

Yeah, there it was.

"That good?" Clint asked, kept his voice low and his tone as soothing as he could. "That's right, she gettin' it?"

"Oh that's," Steve answered on a breath, his face mostly obscured where she was pushing it down against the mattress. "Oh please, _please-_ "

"Right angle?" Clint asked, and Nat shook her head and shifted and-

Steve made a noise that wasn't a word, then, a sudden gasp that broke as his lungs seized, and then he said,

" _Oh!_ " through gritted teeth, and then started gulping desperate little sounds. _"Oh, oh, fu-hu-huck,_ " and then, oh, okay, his spine curled and his fists twisted in the fabric and he said, "shhhit," and made a noise like that time he'd been hit in the leg in East Timor - surprised and shocked by the intensity - his whole body shaking with the force of it.

She kept going, because she'd only just really got up to pace, and he made more of those wounded sounds, Clint listened to them scrape up his throat.

"Still good?" he said.

"Don't stop," he said, "don't stop, don't stop!"

So she didn't, just kept right on going, jolting Steve and the bed while Steve just lay there and took it. Actually, that was unfair - he wasn't just taking it, he was actively participating in it, pushing back and arching his spine and anchoring himself to the bed so he could get it harder.

After maybe another minute, maybe two, he shook his head, and Clint was getting ready to tell Nat to stop when he said,

"I want," in the space between jolted breaths, "Clint, I-"

So Clint used one finger to tuck the bedclothes down enough to kiss him softly - it was messy just because Nat was moving him around so much - and then said, 

"What?" as Nat repositioned the hand on the back of his head. "What?"

"I want," he said, and his skin was red and his eyes were glassy. "I want you," he said. "My mouth."

Clint felt all the blood rush downwards because, uh, fuck yeah, if that's really what Steve meant. A mouth like that, eyes like that? Fuck yeah.

"What, huh?" he said. "You want me too, wanna suck me off?"

"God yes," he said, and he unwound the fingers of his nearest hand from the bedclothes to tug at Clint's shirt, his shoulder, his wrist instead.

You didn't have to tell Clint twice - he nodded, gave Steve another kiss and then sat up, stood up, got on the bed on his knees and shuffled until he was in front of Steve instead, and Steve pushed himself up on his hands again, a press-up like before. He kept his hips down, back, so that she could keep right on going, but he wet his lips when Clint when for his fly, nodded when Clint pulled his cock free of his underwear, and then batted Clint's hand away a moment later to grab for it himself.

And then-

"Fuck, Steve," Clint heard himself groan - okay, so Captain America could deepthroat, who knew?

Steve hummed around him, each of Nat's thrusts shifting Steve's mouth on him, and then Steve got to work, fast and thorough and _good_ at it, damn, like he was starving for it.

Like hell was Clint going to complain.

~

After, when Steve lay fucked out and gasping on sheets damp from sweat and come, when Nat went to clean everything in the bathroom, Steve stared at the ceiling in a way that said he wasn't seeing it at all.

"That okay?" Clint asked, even though Steve's two orgasms pretty much answered that one, and the one he'd pulled out of Clint had been way more than okay.

Steve wet his lower lip, turned his head away, nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "It was great." And then, very, very quietly, he said, "I could've loved them both enough."

Clint laced his fingers with Steve's and lay down next to him, squeezed gently.

Because, come on now. What the hell could he say to that?

***

“You ought to learn,” she told him one day, eventually, after they'd been doing what they were doing for a long while, “how to touch a woman properly.”

His head turned instantly, arrested immediately, eyes gone dark with color flushing his face even as he looked at her.

“I wanna learn,” he said, his voice small, soft – careful.

***

Clint walked in one evening to find him sprawled naked and face-down on the bed, Nat dressed in yoga pants and a tank where she knelt between his legs, massaging his back while he trembled, something humming softly.

"You got a lot of tension across your shoulders," she said spreading oil with her palms - an understatement, Clint knew. "When'd you last see an MT?"

"Awha?" Steve answered, and she frowned, reached out, pressed a couple of buttons on the little black box that sat by his hip on the end of a wire.

Muscles rippled all down Steve's back as he gasped, gave a punched-out sound. Clint peered over her shoulder and caught the flash of blue nestled up against Steve’s ass, watched the wire on it shake as it vibrated.

"You know what a happy ending is though," he said, "right, Cap?"

"Ohgodplease," Steve mumbled, and Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Obviously," she said. _"Eventually."_

Steve just laughed drunkenly.

"Hmmmmmm," he said.

***

It was easy to show him new things, to gain his interest. She figured that he'd be the fuddy-duddy Tony was always labeling him about this at least, but she'd been wrong about even that. Did he want to get fucked into a mattress? Hell yeah, and it didn't matter whether it was Clint, or her with a strap-on. Did he want to know about bondage? Hell yes, he wanted to know and he'd buy ropes to practise. Did he want to try temperatures, pain, orgasm denial? Sure thing (hated), why not (only certain types) and fuck yes (for as long as there were hours in the day).

It was fun to manipulate him, that much was certain, and it pleased her to be doing the job correctly. Not that she'd been assigned to educate him sexually, but she'd been assigned to help him reintegrate, and he was certainly doing that.

Something about him post-sex was definitely relaxed, of course - the same was true for most people. But he'd learned to be himself, properly himself. He was more adept at leaning into his movements, trained better, did better on missions. They'd never failed, of course, but things went more smoothly, didn't get so hung up on trivia and attitude now the way they had before. For a man as strong-willed as Steve (and didn't she wish she'd met the slip of a guy who used to plant himself like a tree? _There_ was a kid whose limits would have been fun to test), she would have put money on his unwillingness to submit, on an ingrained necessity to dominate. And not because of his size, either, but because of the man he'd been once - she knew very few people who would have started off as belittled and underestimated as Young Steven G Rogers had been, and would still enjoy being tied up and planted face-down and told what to do.

But then, she figured, it wasn't about submission or domination for him. It was about pleasure - his own and others' - and, of course, curiosity. These days, he moved with a loose-limbed confidence, an easygoing affability, and she didn't doubt that Stark's opinion of him might change if he spoke to Steve now. Still, she could only imagine that leading to the conversation about how much he'd changed, and she did not want to be responsible for confirming to Tony Stark that somebody he'd labeled as stuck-up really had just needed to get laid. Or, at the very least, had needed to get laid as well as the multitude of other things he needed. 

Steve wasn't stuck up because he needed to get laid - he'd been _shutting down_ because he needed physical affection. And because Stark had been pissing him off on purpose. And because everyone he knew was dead.

She ran her hand over his chest again - over his sternum this time where they'd been playing with his nipples for a while until now, and watched his eyes flutter closed. She used the opportunity to pick up the clamps from behind the pillow. Steve frowned, could obviously hear the chain, and his eyes tracked the movement as she lifted her hands back into view. 

It was almost comical the way his eyes widened, the soft _mmf_ he gave behind the makeshift gag when she lifted the clamps into view. The two clamps were connected by a thick silver chain, cinched in the middle by a swivel lobster clasp, and his breathing picked up, fast and shallow. She had no idea if he'd seen them before, but she'd been expecting the usual response in games like these. Struggling, a shake of the head, perhaps a few desperate noises-

Except, when she raised her eyebrow, he _nodded._ Actually, he nodded almost too quickly, said, _'mh, mmh!_ and arched his back for her, like a presentation. It was...completely against her expectations, actually, and she glanced at Clint before she went to attach the first one. Steve watched her hands, lifted his head and held his breath as she squeezed the clamp open and positioned it, and then when she let go, so that it pinched one small, pink little nipple between rubber-sheathed tips, Steve moaned a sound so soft she barely heard it, a noise that shuddered as it left him, and his whole body sagged into the mattress, his eyes going back as his head rolled on the pillow, breaths coming fast again.

He half-whimpered for the second one as she held it open above his skin, a plea that was only wordless because they'd covered his mouth and, this time, once she'd made him wait a little longer, once he'd held his breath a few seconds more so that impatience mades his fingers flex, she let go, let it do its job, and he gasped hard in through his nose, hands leaving the headboard to form claws as his back arched toward her.

She used it to her advantage, lobster clasp that joined them still held tight between her thumb and two fingers, and drew the chain upward. When it ran out of slack, his whole face screwed up, and his head went back, eyes shut tight, back arched as far as he could.

She pulled _just_ a little further than the full length of the chain, just for a moment or two, but then dropped the clasp. The whole caboodle landed on his sternum, and he opened his eyes when it did, glanced at it and then at her, and she wasn't sure what he wanted. Thankfully, there were two of them, and Clint reached across to stroke Steve's bangs off his forehead with one warm palm.

“Not punishment,” he said, his voice soft. “She'll do it in a minute, we promise.”

Steve looked up at him, blue eyes wide, gaze unwavering as he nodded, grasping the headboard again. How he could leave himself so vulnerable she'd likely never know. 

When she moved again, Steve tore his gaze from Clint's to watch, but Clint kept stroking his hair, his forehead, and Steve just stared. The few seconds respite would have made the flesh more sensitive, would make the rest of this more painful. 

She picked up the clasp and, at as speed that was as constant as she could make it, moved it over him, over his chest, over his face, above his head to clip onto the small ring embedded in the wall over their bed. It was _just_ too far for him to stay relaxed, and he made a small, surprised sound of pain before he was arching his back to keep the tension bearable.

He couldn't take a full breath, couldn't relax to lie flat – it was the simplest of predicaments and she didn't doubt it was one he could grow to love. He seemed pretty close already, cock curving upward, hard enough that the tip rested below his navel, drooling precome, enough space between the shaft and the skin of his lower stomach to, perhaps, fit the palm of one hand. She didn't do it yet. Instead she watched him, saw him begin to understand the position he was in, saw him adjust his breathing, learn to pay more attention to the breadth of his chest and the length of his spine.

He was, she noted, trembling, breathing fast and shallow because he couldn't breathe slow and deep, and he held himself still because she'd put him on the edge of something, and he'd wait to fall until she told him to. 

She tapped the chain a little, watched his cock twitch slightly, and looked at Clint. Steve was breathing like a freight train, fast and rhythmic and louder than usual, but he kept his hands above his head like a good boy, made quiet little sounds but didn't shout.

She tapped the chain again, and this time he swallowed the noise he was making - literally, she heard it catch in his throat.

Clint looked at her this time, and she nodded when he did. Then she reached out and twisted the clamp on his right nipple. He whimpered, arching even more, and he leg shifted on the bed, knee bending, foot dragging upward over the mattress. His leg came in then, before he flattened it, and she realized he'd been trying - and then remembered he shouldn't be trying - to get a little friction on his cock.

"Good?" she said, and he nodded, fast. 

"Mm-hmm," he said, and then quietly, "mmmmmmmm-hm."

His breaths in were hitching sometimes, his limbs trembled lightly, and she looked at Clint again, did a little facial- to-and-fro with him, and then Clint reached out with very gentle fingertips - index, middle and ring - and stroked them in a line up Steve's frenulum and back again.

"Low grade polish," he said, like an _idiot_ , and Steve laughed unsteadily, groaned as his hips rolled up.

 _"Plokhay mal'chik!"_ she snapped, reaching out to flick one of the clamps, and he said,

"Mh, mhhh, mhhhhh," and let go of the headboard with one hand.

He almost, _almost_ stopped Clint, hand down and fingers reaching out for Clint's wrist to stop him when he managed to get himself under control, and shook his hand instead.

_No._

She held out her own hand, a signal for Clint to stop, and he did, paused, his fingers held just above Steve's cock instead of against it. 

"You need to stop?" she said, and Steve's fingers curled into a fist, his hand went back to the headboard. 

He made a noise that was very obviously an apology, and so she gave Clint a nod, let him keep going. Steve went bowstring tight immediately and his hand came down _again_ , but then he sounded like he was choking, his fingers curled into that fist again, opened, closed, knuckles white, and then he was grappling at the bedclothes with his free hand, coming in stripes up his stomach with a series of soft, shocked little sounds.

"Mhh, mhh" he said, and Clint kept going, just those small movements, Steve's body arched and taut and trembling from barely anything at all.

She reached up on a whim, unhooked the chain, and pulled, slowly. Hard.

Steve made such a loud, harsh noise that she knew it was a 'no,' even past the fabric over his mouth, but he kept his hands out of the way, hips shuddering upward as he looked down the length of his body at her.

She didn't let up, either, just pulled slowly, inexorably towards herself, and he gasped loudly, faster, until he went dead silent, eyes shut tight, head as far forward as he could. 

With a jingle of metal, the clamp on his left nipple pulled free, and he shoved his hips back down against the bed as the second one slipped forward, the clamp holding the poor, small, purpling edge of Steve's nipple.

He groaned through his teeth, and she gave it one last tug so that it came free.

His whole body jerked then, and Clint wasted no time in leaning forward and sealing his mouth over the nearest one. Natasha took the other and used the flat of her tongue to push the blood back in, sucked against the flesh to make it sting and tingle, and Steve bucked beneath them, breathless and gasping, stomach slick and his cock still just as hard as it had been before he came.

~

She tried clover clamps once.

The anticipation vanished, replaced instead by flat unhappiness, as soon as she let it close, and he shook his head, body curling inward, teeth bared.

"No!" he gasped immediately, used the word she'd taught him, " _amnistirovat!_ "

And she took it off him.

"Too much for you?" she said, smirking, and he let go of the headboard.

"The others were nice," he said. "You know. Pain-nice. Those were just pain - I've had enough of that."

Clint nodded, reached out for them, and took them from Natasha,

"That's fine," he said. "Whatever you want."

They didn't try them again.

***

“Have I ever told you how fun it would’ve been to have been in New York in the thirties?” she said, and she saw tension flicker across his shoulders. He didn’t want to think about New York in the thirties, and she should have known better than to have phrased it like that - she rethought it instead. “Or even if that one idiot’s youth ray worked, I don’t care either way - what were you, a hundred pounds?”

He’d been ninety-five before the serum, and didn’t answer her now.

“It would have been easy,” she said. “Stuff you in the back of a Buick and tie you up in a tenement somewhere?” The trick was to make him picture familiarity without the pain that went alongside it. “One of those God-awful spring mattresses.”

He made a noise then, a huff of sound, and Clint cocked his head as he thrust, trying to see Steve’s face to check it was laughter.

“You’d like that,” she said, and it wasn’t a question because she knew it was true. “If we tied your wrists to your ankles and spread you open on the bed.”

She looked at Clint, who straightened up again and nodded without even looking at her, didn’t slow down for a second. Steve moaned softly, helpless, knuckles white where his hands were in fists in the bedclothes up by his head. Despite his having his face in the quilt and his head turned mostly away, she brushed the damp hair back off his forehead anyway. 

“Get his mouth on you, hmm? Get his hands on that pretty backside and spread you open, get his-”

“Uhn, hah- _uhn,_ ” Steve said, eyes screwing up, as he hunched his shoulders, head pushing down into the bed. 

She looked at Clint again, and Clint’s hands were white-knuckled, too, digging into what little flesh there was on Steve’s hips, sweat dripping off his nose, running down his chest. He gave her a look that said nothing so much as it said _can you believe this?_ and she gave him a wry smile in response.

“I could do that, that’d be nice for you, right?” Clint said, taking over. “Take a little care, kiss you someplace needs kissin’ but people don’t kiss?”

Steve’s voice broke over the next moan, his fists tightened. Clint’s head went back, too, he winced, so Steve’s hands couldn’t be the only thing that tightened.

“Yeah,” Clint said, “yeah, that’s it, you’d’a liked it, you still like that,” she wondered if Bucky Barnes ever did that for him, “ _oh_ you- _fuck_ \- you’d like bein’ tied up and spread open,” oh, that was turn of phrase Steve definitely liked, “get my mouth on you, get my tongue in you-”

They had to be careful with dirty talk - Steve didn’t like pushing it too much. He was a long way from the mentality of a nineteen-thirties American, of course, but still, you could only go so far, say so many things. He didn’t like an excess of swearing, beyond the usual exclamations, and he didn’t like too much detail either, nor did he like too much extrapolation. If Clint told him he had a pretty dick, he’d go pink, but if he said he wanted to come on those tits, Steve’s whole demeanor would darken. He’d soured visibly after she’d called her genitals a ‘pussy’ and they didn’t even _try_ him with the word ‘cunt,’ Natasha was fairly certain he’d punch somebody. He didn’t mind his own euphemisms, though - he preferred hearing clitoris to clit, but he’d call it a pearl or a ‘little thing’ if he was talking about it and not thinking too hard. Most of the time it was the good old in and out - ‘I want in you,’ ‘let me in,’ ‘put it in’, et cetera.

They also had to remember this was a man whose entire childhood had been spent around doctors. Getting too clinical was out, too. She only got formal once, and he backed off immediately. 

This though?

“Wonder how you taste on the inside,” Clint muttered, and Steve made the sort of noise he might make if he’d spilled coffee on important paperwork, and came hard enough to send Clint headfirst into his own orgasm, too.

***

It worked well for a while. A long while.

They taught him well, and he learned to be responsible and inquisitive and ask questions if he wanted to ask them, for specific things if he wanted them. They'd spar and go on missions and fuck and make out, and they'd eat take out and watch movies and talk and play cards.

He went from spending all his time in their bed to learning preferences, having ideas, asking questions and coming to them when he needed them - because, after that first few months, when his desperation and his libido and his loneliness were at least a little tamer, he didn't have to come to them every spare moment he had. He could go weeks without anything more than a shared joke in the locker room, with only five minutes together on the mat, before he'd call in advance to show up on their doorstep, rubbing the back of his neck over an itch he couldn't scratch, or send them a 'next time you're free' text and wait for one of them to knock on his door.

They tried a couple of things that were newish to Steve - Nat rode his face once or twice, Clint ate him out as promised, they messed around with toys (Clint was never going to forget the first time the clicked the button on the vibrator they'd been using on him - and neither was Steve, that was for sure) and they learned a couple of new things about him. He liked to sleep alongside someone once in a while, for example, to cuddle up and hold. He got better at lasting longer but still liked to come more than once - liked the sting of a second orgasm too soon after the first. And he liked sex when he had too much energy that he couldn't expend - Clint gave him a handjob after a mission gone awry when his right hand was out of action and his left was proving less than adequate, and Steve sucked him off at two in the morning after taking Clint home on his bike. Plus, he found things he liked just for liking them. Clint rubbed his head and his ears when they were being quiet one time and Steve really liked that. Natasha grabbed a fistful of his hair and tied his wrists one time when she fucked him, and then he asked for it the next time she rode him, too.

It worked well as a casual arrangement, for a very long time. There were no issues about complicated emotions and Steve's confidence grew along with his knowledge. He was very good at reading people, very good at being intuitive regarding their preferences and, while there were times he needed to be the focus of their attentions, he was just as unselfish with their encounters as he was with everything else. 

There were a good few occasions on which Clint had called Steve for company and they'd wound up frotting in the kitchen or the three of them making out on the couch, and Clint very happily ended up with bruises the first time he let Steve top. Steve, predictably, was horrified, but he learned that too - how to better regulate his strength, reign himself in when it was needed. 

But there'd been a certain regularity about it. A kind of pattern they'd established. And he and Nat were both aware of it when the pattern faltered, both aware that it was unusual for Cap to have gone so long without some kind of hint or some kind of seemingly-casual request.

So it was Clint who rang. He did a little better at Steve Rogers' kind of nuance a lot of the time, and Steve seemed to trust him a little better with the quiet side. Nat had a preference, but it didn't always fall in line with Steve's requirements. 

And, when he rang, he asked for Clint. Alone.

Clint, on speakerphone frowned, looked over at Nat. She shrugged.

"I guess?" he said. "You okay?"

 _"I really,"_ he said, and then he sighed. _"There's something I want. Please."_

And Clint really should have known what it was.

~

Steve had been quiet recently. He could be a sarcastic sonofabitch, could banter with the best of them, but he'd been keeping to himself, and avoiding social gatherings, avoiding group training, avoiding everything.

When Clint arrived, Steve looked tired, and drained, and Clint stepped into his personal space as soon as the door was closed, kissed him softly, and slid his fingers into Steve's hair.

"Hey," he said, "what's wrong, what is it?"

Steve didn't answer him.

Instead, he waved it off, and made Clint coffee instead. Steve was busy in the kitchen when Clint saw it - a pamphlet of the Smithsonian's latest exhibit, which happened to be the Captain America exhibit, the cover of which was a copy of the huge mural that had been commissioned for the exhibition - with James Bucky Barnes over Steve's left shoulder.

That was right, it was Barnes' birthday soon, wasn't it? 

"It's okay, Boss," Clint said. "I can wait for that coffee, you wanna ask me what you wanted to ask me?"

And Steve looked at him then the way he'd looked at Clint all the way back at the start, his eyes full of broken memories and dashed hopes, his posture stiff and small, like he'd tried to make himself as invisible as he could.

"Yeah, okay," Clint said, "come here."

And he went over and hugged Steve.

It wasn't like the first time, wasn't that Steve hadn't been touched and didn't know how to be. This was bigger, worse - he reached for Clint and held him too tightly and shook but didn't speak and didn't cry.

"Tough time of year, huh?" Clint asked, and Steve gave a bitter, breathy sort of laugh , tucked his head against Clint's neck.

"Sorry," he said.

"You don't gotta be sorry," Clint answered, but there was a long silence following that, and Clint got the feeling that maybe he'd misunderstood. "What you sorry about, Cap?"

Steve let go of him then, went away. 

And right, o-kay. So Clint knew that people didn't just get better, that was dumb. But like…Steve had been doing better and was trying to get out and live a little, and depression didn't just stop when you got a good night's sleep and a lay, but it was kind of big for Clint to see him like this because, yeah, okay, this was the dude they'd first met a few months before.

It was easy to see how far he'd come now Clint could tell where he'd been at to start with.

"Cap, come on," he said softly, following him, reaching out to get his fingers in Steve's palm.

And Steve let him, that was fine. Didn't snatch his hand away, turned to face Clint instead and just held his hand.

"I miss him," he said. "I miss all of them but I…"

Clint nodded, took a step forward again, ready if Steve wanted an embrace.

"God, if I could just _talk_ to him," he said, half turning away, and Clint didn't say anything. "You know what he said to me?"

And then he was quiet, far too quiet. 

"It's okay," Clint told him. "If you wanna tell me. If you don't."

"I don't," Steve rasped. "I want- I want _you._ Just. I wanna go to bed, I need somebody's hands on me."

And Clint wasn't a therapist, definitely sure that this wasn't a brilliant idea. But what the hell else was he supposed to do? He couldn't leave. And Clint was pretty sure Steve would never forgive him if he called for help or something. 

"Okay," he said, hands on Steve's head when Steve came in for a kiss a little too fast, "okay."

~

If he'd been pretty sure this was a bad idea when they started, he was certain of it by the time they were through. Steve kept the curtains closed and the lights off, wouldn't open his eyes. They'd fucked face to face, Steve clinging and desperate, chasing something he couldn't have, seeing someone else behind his eyelids, and he made himself silent, silent, silent, until he came with a wounded noise he couldn't keep back, shoulders hunched, hands white knuckled in the pillow he pulled down over his face.

~

Clint wasn't offended, obviously. It would take a lot more than being a sexual surrogate for that. But he was worried. 

After, Steve lay on his side, with his back to Clint. 

"You okay?" Clint asked, and Steve reached back for his arm, pulled it over his wat, pressed back against him until they were spooning. 

"Can you put your other hand on my head?" Steve said, and Clint wasn't sure what he meant, shuffled around until Steve did it for him - he wanted Clint's other palm over his forehead, not quite like a blindfold. 

Steve's skin was hot and damp and Clint could see fucking perfectly thank you - Steve hadn't been crying, there'd been no sobs or gasps or grimaces, but there were saltwater tracks just the same. 

Yeah, okay, Clint had made a bad decision.

And they lay very quiet for a while, breathing and recovering, Clint trying to figure out his next move, until Steve said,

"It's my fault," and Clint was going ask what Steve meant, did he mean the train (not his fault) or the plane crash (a necessary sacrifice) or any number of things, but Steve said, "he couldn't love the guy with the serum."

And Clint stared at the back of his head. 

The couldn't be true.

Everything he'd learned about Bucky Barnes from museums, everything Steve had told them, that couldn't be true.

"Maybe it just looked that way," Clint said. "You know? Like how you said you couldn't do anything once you got to Europe 'cause of Captain A-"

"It was his idea," Steve answered, and Clint shut his mouth with a click. "We didn't agree to it, he just told me. It wasn't right for Captain America and he couldn't love the guy the serum made. I just wasn't the same."

"Steve," Clint said, his voice rough with the beginning of genuine worry - how the hell did he handle this one? "You knew him. He must have meant something else."

And there was a long silence. 

"Can't ask him, though, can I?" Steve said.

Clint stared at the back of his head.

"Thanks," Steve told him a moment later, and then pushed back the bedclothes and fished around for something to wear. 

He went with pajama pants, pulled them on, and then walked around the bed.

"I'm gettin' coffee," he said, "I'll grab you a cup."

And then he left the room. 

And the things was, that would have been bad enough. 

But when Clint followed him into the kitchen, mouth already open to try anything to make it better, Steve rinsing out the carafe at the sink, it was _Natasha's_ voice that spoke first.

"You sounded like you were enjoying yourself," she said.

All the hair stood up on the back of Clint's neck just as the line of Steve's shoulders went taut enough that Clint worried for his skin. And then his head snapped around just as Clint's did.

Nat was over by his couch, smirking, and she raised an eyebrow at Steve in challenge a split second before Clint managed to sign _NO!_ And then Clint could see the split second change in Steve.

Head up, shoulders back, face like stone.

"Get out," he said.

Nat looked like she thought he was joking, even though it was clear he couldn't be further from it.

"What's the matter, Rogers, don't-"

"Get," he said. "Out." And then his gaze flicked back to meet Clint's, he looked Clint up and down. "Both of you."

For a long few moments, there was nothing. Stalemate. Standoff. And Clint knew Nat would be the one to break it if he let her.

He'd only seen Steve that way once or twice though - feet planted, body tense - and never outside of a mission or training.

"Natasha," Clint said.

She scoffed, but he shook his head. She waited a couple more seconds, like, _seriously?_ but then she rolled her eyes when she realized he meant it (or, more accurately, accepted he couldn't be swayed), and started to walk to the door.

"I'm sorry, Cap," he said, hoping maybe to salvage something, but Steve had gone back to rinsing the carafe, his back turned.

"Lock it behind you," he said. "Don't come back."

Clint chewed his lip a second, stared at Steve's back.

"Steve," he said, and Steve rounded on him.

"Am I speaking French, Barton?" he said, and then he brought his hands up and spelled it out in sign. _G-E-T O-U-T._

And, okay, that was also a dickish thing to do, but Clint could handle that.

"No," he said, and Steve's eyebrows went so far up they disappeared behind his bangs - steve could use a haircut.

"I beg your pardon," he said, voice dangerously low, looming because he was tall and angry, and Clint shook his head.

"I'm not going, not until I know you're okay."

"Ha fucking ha," Steve answered. "You wanted any say in this, you should have asked me about her. And you," he said, looking at Nat, "You should'a knocked first."

She made another of those scoffing sounds and, honestly, fine she was the best assassin he'd ever seen but would it hurt her to be tactful once in a while?

"Please," she said. "You know he tells me everything."

"He tells you what I tell him," Steve says, "and I tell him what I choose to tell him. Or have you forgotten what it's like to not have control over your own secrets?"

Clint looked at her then, knew she didn't like it. You couldn't see it on her face, of course, but he knew.

"I wouldn't call it a secret," she said and Steve took a step forward.

"You're on thin ice, Romanov," he told her. 

"Nat-" Clint said, but Steve swept his hand out, slicing through the air, a very effective 'shut up' if ever Clint saw one.

"You got some nerve," Steve told her. "Walkin' in here like I'm a target, mouthin' off like I don't work with you every day."

"Maybe you ought to get stronger locks," she smirked, and Steve went very still, took a very deep breath, and stared at her.

"You must think I'm completely stupid," he said. "Don't you? You think I'm the dumbest guy ever crossed your path, right?"

She shrugged one shoulder, smiling.

"If the shoe-"

" 'Cause you seem to think I don't understand a goddamn thing," he said, "you seem to think you can piss me off and act coy like you got the upper hand even when it's like this - you know you're in the wrong. Stronger locks my ass, you fucked up and you don't wanna talk about it - fine. You think you can come in here whenever you damn well please, you think you can use what I told you about Bucky for a _joke_ , today of all fucking days Romanov? I know you know what today is. So here's how it is - you tell me you're sorry and we move on. Tonight we get takeout and I spend the time with my friends, or the next time you do this is the last time. I could live in Fort fucking Knox and you'd be able to come and go as you damn well please - the point is that friends _don't_ until they're _asked_ , and they sure as hell admit it when they've done somethin' they know they shouldn't have, so you decide. I trusted you, Romanov, was I wrong?"

She stared at him for a very long time then, eyes a little narrowed, like she wasn't entirely sure what he'd said.

Clint kind of worried if they were going to like…punch it out because okay, they knew he was good at people, but damn.

Natasha didn't say anything, and Steve just stared at her, waiting. He left it long enough, too, Clint could hear the tension behind him, fancied maybe he could hear Steve's teeth grinding. And then Steve straightened up, leaned back.

"I'm an assignment," he said, and laughed, and Clint held out a hand ready to stop him.

"Cap-"

"I didn't know," Natasha said, and then the silence rang around them.

"What, that's it?" Steve said. " 'You didn't know?' "

"I knew the date," she said. "I didn't know what you wanted him for."

"And that's all I get?" Steve answered. 

She lifted her head a little, glanced at Clint.

"I," she said, "apologize."

And even Steve seemed surprised by that. He stood still for another long few moments - they all did, kind of half-frozen and unsure. And then Steve said,

"I accept," and kind of sagged a little where he stood. "I, okay. I accept. Uh. Okay. So, takeout?"

And the thing was, Clint knew that _Steve_ knew, she could ignore any boundary he set. That, if she did, he wouldn't even know it. But he was still trusting her to stick to her word.

Later, much later, after takeout and a bittersweet evening talking about the man Steve had loved, they left him happier, so much more at ease, with his shoulders a little lighter, and Natasha took Clint home.

"Captain America trusts you," he said, when she dropped him at his apartments.

"More fool him," she said, but there was a look on her face he wasn't used to when she said it.

***


	6. Chapter 6

“So, wait," James says, and Steve smiles a little.

"I know what you're gonna say," he says. "You're gonna tell me how terrible that was of her."

"It was!" James says. "It was awful of her, of both of them, how could they do that to you? You can’t just break in and-"

Steve shakes his head, takes one of James’ hands in his own.

“First off, they didn’t - I thought Clint brought her along, turns out she just followed him.”

James blinks rapidly. 

“That’s worse,” he says. 

“It was a different point in our lives,” Steve says. “These things are how we learn.”

James shakes his head.

“She should have known what was going on!” 

“Now why on earth should she have known that?” Steve says, and James opens his mouth but then thinks about it. “She didn’t know what I’d said to Clint because Clint didn’t tell her. She didn’t know what I wanted from Clint ‘cause Clint didn’t say. She fucked up, sure, so I set my boundaries.”

“She _broke in!_ ” James says, and Steve smiles, winces a little.

“She didn’t know that,” he says. “Or-” and he has to hold up a hand because James is about to go off, seriously, “-it didn’t occur to her. Back then she and Clint were always pulling shit like that - Fury’d send them in for surveillance or intelligence and they’d just hang around and do the same. Clint could get _anywhere_ , and she could get _in_ anywhere, and they just…that was their every day. It…wasn’t ideal. I _hated_ it. But they locked up and locked down and they knew that the only people who could get in were each other.”

“What, like a really shit doorbell?” James says, and Steve rolls one shoulder.

“Yeah?” he says. “It was kind of like…’if you can keep me out, I won’t come in’ but then you couldn’t keep ‘em out because it was them.”

James scoffs, rolls his eyes.

“No, listen,” Steve says, “she was taught to take advantage of every situation. She was raised to hurt, and nothing besides. It wasn’t like shoot first and ask questions later - it was _gain the upper hand and then kill your target._ Clint taught her how to be a human being. It’s just that…y’know. He missed some lessons.”

James draws a breath in through his nose.

“Please tell me she did what you asked,” James says. “Like please tell me she never broke in after that.”

“From the moment she left,” Steve answers, “right up until this second, she’s never once crossed the boundaries I set. She’s never broken in, she’s never hacked my emails, she’s never chased down files or snooped. Unless I’ve asked her to - and I have once or twice. Asked her to check what they keep in my records, y’know. And okay, I have to remember to ask her not to do that stuff when it comes to new things, but that’s because her default is different from ours. For her, knowledge is power, is safety, is security, where it’d be an invasion of privacy for us.”

“She didn’t run a background check on me,” James says, “that’s true.”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve nods, and then he reaches up and brushes James’ hair out of his eyes. “She knows that I meant what I said. And I’m glad she values my friendship enough to have done as I asked.”

“She _wanted_ to run a background check on me though?” James says, and Steve laughs.

“Yeah?” he says. “Of course she did. But I asked her not to and she didn’t. I asked her not to break in, and she didn’t. I asked her not to spread my secrets, or delve into my private life-”

“She tells Clint though?” James asks, and Steve leans back, gaze turning to the middle distance.

“It’s,” he says, “better if you…try and think of them as one person. They will never keep a secret from each other permanently. But they’ll also never tell a soul besides each other. If I tell Nat a secret, I know that the only people in the known universe who’ll go to their grave knowing that secret are her and Clint. Same for him. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of ‘em. You know?”

James wrinkles his nose.

“You have weird friends,” he says.

“I do,” Steve says. “And I love them like family.”

James blows out a breath.

“Long as they provide you with the same courtesy, I’m down.”

Steve nods, smiles.

“Good,” he says. “They grow on you. I _hope_ they’ll grow on you.”

James searches Steve’s face, scrapes his teeth over his lower lip.

“Yeah,” he says. “I hope so too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The observable MCU timeline has Steve putting the Valkyrie down two days after Bucky falls from the train, and the Battle of New York happening less than a month after he wakes. 
> 
> My headcanon involving Steve at the end of CATFA and the beginning of Avengers doesn’t change much, and so some of this will seem familiar if you’ve read a couple of my other fics. I didn’t quite copy/paste whole sections, but I did repeat language and situations I’ve written before, because Steve attending SHIELD Orientation, and then having a panic attack in a broom closet before he gathers himself enough to confront Loki, are things you’ll have to pry from my cold, dead hands. 
> 
> If you have anything you'd like to ask about this fic, or any of my other fics, please feel free to come and ask me on tumblr - my username's the same there - and I'll be happy to chat! If you’d like rare updates, I’m @justanononline on twitter these days. @ me to get my attention. Although any and all asks are appreciated (I'm incredibly grateful for your interest), please don't message me asking for plot details! I will not be answering those ones!
> 
> Here is [a link to a timeline](https://66.media.tumblr.com/aac4be76b217f7b6ea54592e0a76d168/tumblr_inline_pg5mcewTA21rckout_500.png) if you'd like to know the dates of the occurrences in this fic up to part 10, and here is a [a link to the next part of the timeline](https://66.media.tumblr.com/5f3c9fff19fe97660662611079013dad/tumblr_ps0mw599GT1s2056to1_500.png) from part 11 to 21.
> 
> Fun facts that you probably know - the Avengers post-credit scene in the shawarma joint was filmed in LA after the film was finished. That joint was the Shalom Grill, 9340 W Pico Blvd. But in-universe, obviously, the Avengers go for shawarma in New York (at a place called Shawarma Palace in-universe). The joint I wrote Tony looking up on Steve’s satnav is NAYA, 688 3rd Ave. Both the LA and NYC places get very good reviews!


End file.
